University of London, Goldsmiths College
Mathieu Gallois
MA Visual Arts
2003
Non Individuals of Super Modernity
Introduction:
Non Individuals of Super Modernity draws heavily upon sociological and anthropological source material. The paper’s emphasis on these non-art disciplines reflects the Marxist underpinnings to my art-making philosophy which perceives the individual as a product and reflection of the changing socio-economic arrangements in which he / she lives.
Significantly in terms of the paper's structure, this Marxist logic, in effect predetermines an investigation of art, and more specifically in terms of this essay, portraiture, which is deeply reliant upon a research-based investigation of the fundamentals of society and its structures, and how the individual constructs his / her self identity within this wider social, rather than art historical, framework.
The first section expands upon the anthropological premise of cultural otherness as a means of constructing meaning through differentiation. Whereas Marc Augé’s thesis identifies a field of otherness within contemporary society as a new proposition, an idea that Non Individuals of Super Modernity expands upon in later sections, I thought it necessary initially, in seeking to truly understand portraiture, to investigate a society in which portraiture has no premise or resonance as a cultural medium.
Guiding the paper’s initial sociological and anthropological research, the later exploration of Augé’s’ thesis, the descriptions of August Sander, Thomas Ruff and Andreas Gursky’s oeuvres are a number of key prepositions / questions that the paper seeks to explore:
Is there a link between the dominant ideology of our times, individualism, and the growing phenomena of social alienation as expressed and documented in contemporary western art?
Has a new, postmodern, or super modern category of individualism emerged?
And finally, could this super modern individual share significant social and cultural characteristics with his / her distant Medieval ancestor?
Non Individuals of Super Modernity
PART I
The emergence of the super modern individual: from the Middle Ages to the 21st century
Marc Augé, director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales (Anthropology), and author of Non–lieux, Introduction a une anthropologie de la surmodernity (Non-places of super modernity), draws upon and seeks to expand the science of anthropology beyond its traditional intellectual subject through a study of the present and the question of the other (in the present day as distinguished from history).
The western science of anthropology, states Augé, concerns itself with all forms of other.
The exotic other defined in relation to a supposedly identical 'we' (we French, we Europeans, we Westerners); the other of others, the ethnic or cultural other … as a reference for a system of differences, starting with the division of the sexes…(and finally) referring to the private other - which is at the heart of all systems of thought. (M. Augé, 1992, 12).
In Non–lieux, Introduction a une anthropologie de la surmodernité, Augé turns the gaze of the anthropologist back onto contemporary western society. Augé presents the argument that the accelerated transformations of contemporary western culture, which he defines/describes as super modern, have brought about ‘a renewed methodical reflection on the category of other-ness’. (M. Augé, 1992, 13). In other words, super modernity has created a 'field' of other-ness within our own culture.
To establish an idea of otherness, naturally one has to first define that which is not other. Underlining this anthropological perspective is an idea of cultural totality, a dynamic in which the individual identifies with a wider social group (a society), which in turn is geographically located in a ‘place’ or region. According to Augé, the interaction between society and the environment over time forms a history-based narrative called culture, in which the individual can anchor a firm sense of identity. Architecture, for example, is a very concrete manifestation of this dynamic between people and environment (each region’s architecture is unique to that region’s environmental specificity, i.e. building material, climate and culture etc.). A more foreign concept of this dynamic (in our increasingly multicultural societies) is the psychological shaping over millennia of a people by the environment, so that skin type, hair, body shape and so on reflect a region of influence. In this sort of deeply embedded environmental culture, creation mythologies root the individual in an all-encompassing cosmology that often situates ‘place related’ sacred sites.
This idea of cultural totality, as a pure manifestation, is something of a covert ‘indigenous fantasy’ according to Augé, propagated by both anthropologists and societies (nationalities) themselves (and artists, as we shall see in a later chapter on August Sander). It is important to point out that ethnic or cultural groups do not all exist as cultural islands. Regions and peoples overlap and influence each other, they evolve, and increasingly (even) co-exist (live together and share the same environments). Sub-groups exist within wider cultural entities, and individuals within groups can exercise degrees of autonomy in terms of their particular cultural identities. Nevertheless, within this understanding of a porous, malleable and evolving whole, Augé falls back on the significance of a concrete and symbolic construction of space, an ‘anthropological place’, in which the components of shared and individual identity are located. These ‘anthropological places’, Augé states, have three characteristics in common. They want to be – people want them to be – places of identity, of relations and of history. (M. Augé, 1992, 24).
Charles Taylor, in his essay The Category of the Person chronicles the development of the modern individual through recorded history. The three phases he identifies, documents the progressive distancing of the individual from the community.
The first two phases are defined as follows:
1) I live within a universe.
In the first phase, a cosmological or ontological order provides the framework for human self-conception and understanding of the universe to which he/she is inextricably linked. The individual, through conversation with other members of his/her community, negotiates and constructs an understanding of both the universe and him/herself. Man inhabits and is the product of a cosmological or ontological order. Through conversation a person comes to know him or herself.
2) I am a universe
In the second phase the individuals still learn to know themselves in conversation, however the social order and their place within it are derived from a process of ‘reflexivity’; an objective order is accessed not by looking out, but by looking within. This second phase is exemplified by early Christianity (and in particular by St. Augustine). God is perceived externally. Self knowledge, and knowledge of God comes from within. (C. Taylor. 1985. 65)
A thousand years of Western European history/culture separates two wildly opposing conceptions of individual identity and self-perception within society.
At the beginning of the 21st century, when our daily lives are saturated with images of ourselves and countless others (passport photos, family snapshots, portrait museums, celebrity magazines, television, film, billboard advertising) it is difficult to imagine a people and culture, such as that of medieval Europe, where portraiture had no currency as an idea or object.
If we could meet medieval Europeans they would be foreign to us; we would have the same sense of otherness, and difficulty in understanding their world perception as we do understanding that of non-western people today (such as Asians, American Indians, Aboriginal Australians or Africans). And yet we would be able to communicate with our medieval forebears in roughly the same native languages and recognise that we share significant physiological, environmental, historical, social and cultural underpinnings.
It is both the similarities and differences, which separate us from medieval Europeans, that make a deeper understanding of this historical dichotomy revealing of the meaning and significance of portraiture today. The following brief overview of the Middle Ages will try to identify their economic, social and religious paradigms, which appear to have been inherently incompatible with the continuation and development of portraiture as a meaningful and expressive art form. Underpinning this preposition is the observation that despite all the hardship associated with the Middle Ages (famine, war etc) there is no record or evidence of social alienation being a cultural phenomenon as it is in today’s society.
Comparatively, life in the Middle Ages was extremely harsh and precarious for all members of society. The struggle to survive dominated day-to-day life: famines, illness, crop failure, poverty, plagues, war and brutal oppression; pretty much all the cruel clichés that we associate with the times are reaffirmed when one researches the period. Average life expectancy hovered in the mid-thirties. The most significant socio-geographic trend of the early Middle Ages was the general re agravaization of society. The city of Trier for example (Germany’s oldest city, located close to the border of France and Luxembourg), decreased in population from approximately 60 thousand individuals during imperial Roman times to a few thousand in the sixth century. Throughout medieval Europe the economic, and subsequently the cultural focus of society was dispersed across the countryside where 90% of the population resided.
Society was divided into two main groups; the ruling minority consisting of nobility (kings and queens, princes, lords and knights), members of the Christian church (such as monks and priests); and the great majority consisting of serfs and peasants (a merchant class only emerges in late medieval times from the 12th century on). The notion of being a ‘citizen’ with rights enshrined and protected by the rule of law or a constitution did not exist. In basic terms, the contractual and social underpinnings of these two groups’ coexistence were an exchange of land use in return for taxes and protection. Despite this clear class-based structure and the great economic inequalities that divided society, the affiliation with a certain manor or a specific city could at times be more significant than one’s class origin. A communal form of living determined by co-operative elements in keeping with the example of the family was the norm. A medieval serf- like mentality is said to have permeated all strata of society. ( Goetz, 1991, 241)
Both the dominant Christian and monarchic power structures of the time were theocratic structures: power was located in a single, supreme authority. The Bible was the all-encompassing doctrine of the time; a readymade philosophy, or paradigm.
What I am, I am by the grace of God (Pauline statement).
The all encompassing and omnipresent Christian theology did not leave much room for self-reflection, as Walter Ulman states …’the fidelis was now subjected, as far as his social and public life went, to the law as it was given to him, not the law that was made by him’. As such ‘life on earth was seen as punishment for original sin and therefore unavoidably tedious’. ( W. Ulman. 1989, 238)
What was day-to-day life like? A common theme/complaint in the historical writing on this period is the lack of records describing everyday life in any detail. In itself, this is revealing, as it is due in part to the fact that only a very small percentage of the population were literate. But a far more significant factor was the dominant Christian worldview that perceived life on earth as a test and preparation for a future eternal life. The trappings of daily life were not considered important.
The image that emerges of the Middle Ages is that of a highly agricultural, communal and religious society, one in which any concept of individuality appears contradictory and redundant.
For the great majority of the serf and peasant population who had at best, only a very limited legal, communal and spiritual sense of self conception as autonomous individuals, it seems logical that any concept of individuality as expressed through portraiture should be absent from Medieval culture for close to a thousand years. Goetz concludes in her book Life in the Middle Ages
…as far as individual lives were concerned, only a rather limited free space was likely to remain within the reciprocal relationship of institution, space and society, partly because the material basis was highly unfavourable for individual self realisation, partly because class affiliation locked individuals into a specific life style, and partly because individuality was possible during the Middle Ages only within the framework of a group. ( Goetz, 1991, 43).
Today in the Western world, there are two major ideological schools of thought about the nature of selfhood: the place of the community in developing identity, and the meaning and significance of freedom and social obligation. These ideologies, in broad terms, are reflected in the two party political systems (liberal democrat, social democrat) that dominate most western democracies.
The previous overview of the Middle Ages is indispensable in approaching these conflicting ideologies from a healthy, objective perspective. This is particularly true in the case of liberalism which tends to assume the existence of a true(r), free and liberal individual. Neither liberals nor social democrats, the radically different social structure of the Middle Ages illustrates, can claim some sort of jurisdiction over human nature.
In simplified terms, the liberal democrat’s philosophy is individualism: ‘…a theory of society as constituted by individuals whose goal is to fulfil private ends, largely through relationships seen as instrumental (to that end), and whose principal characteristic is the possession of individual rights that have priority over societal needs’ (C Crittender. 1992. 3). Liberty is the liberal’s goal: I define myself. The liberal conception centres on the assumption that every person is the sole proprietor of his or her own person and capacities; civil liberties. (C Crittender. 1992. 13).
Today we are as familiar with the ideology of 'individualism' as we are with the notion of portraiture; both these ideas enjoying, in their modern incarnations, a central position in western culture for close to 800 years! The emergence of portraiture is considered a definitive feature of Renaissance art, but perhaps, the true significance of portraitures re-emergence lies as a historical marker which identifies one of the most important shifts/developments in the western individuals self perception: the emergence of individualism. Whereas portraiture has been the loyal anthologist of individualism's evolution through the centuries, it has also played a key role in creating and defining the modern individual. That is to say that this relationship is more than symbiotic: portraiture and individualism, for the most part, are the same idea.
So, in a deeper sense, what is a portrait? What does it reveal about individualism? We are familiar with the idea of likeness and mimicry; the portrait as an image that refers to the likeness/identity of the subject. Traditionally, we have come to expect a kind of visualisation of the sitter’s interiority; a psychologically revealing profile of the subject, a window onto the individual.
But what does it mean to create an object that refers to a person?
Joanne Woodall, in her introduction to Facing the Subject states:
"The desire that lies at the heart of naturalistic portraiture is to overcome separation: to render a subject distant in time, space, spirit, eternally present." (J. Woodall. 1995, 34)
Portraiture, and the kind of new individual that this genre sought to articulate, is historically associated with the emergence of the bourgeoisie during the Renaissance. This new bourgeois social class focused on an idea of an inner self as a means to differentiate itself from an inherited aristocratic conception of identity and social rank.
The heredity nobility's reliance upon blood and family genealogy rendered noble identity inseparable from the body. By contrast, that of the humanist and commercial elites was necessarily detached from the body in order to justify a position of honour not dependant upon biological inheritance. In this account, individuality ultimately remains a natural objective attribute of the bourgeois, rather than a historically conditioned ideological stance. The bourgeois self is inherently autonomous, interior, self conscious, active and unique, whereas aristocratic identity is socially and politically determined. With the gradual decline of the European aristocratic class, portraiture has come to represent a single bourgeois idea of identity. The dualist separation of mind and body that modern portraiture signifies- is at the core of the modern individual.
For the Social Democrat, selfhood is inextricably a social product. An individual can only be defined and find meaning in relation to other individuals, and ultimately in relation to the community in which he/she participates. As such, individual liberty is secondary to the individual’s commitment to the greater good of the group or society he/she belongs to. For the social democrat, true self-realisation is found in the ‘bonds of fellowship and solidarity that come from intimately sharing a way of life that both expresses and reinforces a common understanding or world view’. (C Crittender. 1992. 13)
These definitions reflect the fundamental basis of an individual’s ideology. In practice however these perspectives coexist and overlap within most communities (as seen in the recent trend of political parties seeking the middle ground).
Within contemporary society’s conflicting liberal and social ideologies, and indeed in terms of Non Persons of Super Modernity’s wider subject matter (in particular the Middle Ages) August Sander’s project, Man of the Twentieth Century, commands a highly revealing social and semiotic position.
August Sander was born in Germany in 1876. The son of a coal miner, he took an interest in photography as a teenager, and was encouraged by his family to become a professional photographer. Sander, as a mature artist/photographer, went against the prevailing trends that dominated photography at the time (romanticised images on gum prints, a kind of art photography where the images where reworked and hand-coloured) and developed a highly modern style of photograph (photographic art work as objective document of reality): a style which is still influential today (the Bechers, Thomas Ruff, etc.). Early in his professional career, Sander initiated an ambitious project which aimed to chronicle the people of Germany through photographic images. Man of the Twentieth Century, despite never being fully realised, has nevertheless become a celebrated document of Weimer Germany and an important body of art. Significantly, Sander elected to document archetypes rather than individuals, and as a result all the images he made for his project record only his subjects profession rather than their names. It is the assumptions that Sanders makes and expresses in his sociological and art historical document about society and the role of man, that make his project deeply revealing.
Sander’s images reveal a deeply social individual and society, one that has more in common, in its structures and assumptions, with medieval Europe than with contemporary society. Implicit in Sander’s framework is an idea of the individual being defined by his/her role in society rather than his/her individual identity as people are today. Sander’s vision is enormously comforting: his images embody an idea of an inclusive society where even the outsiders (revolutionaries, the disabled and even artists) have a place and role. Furthermore, Man of the Twentieth Century documents a ‘society’. Sander’s project might have being called Man of the Twentieth Century, but he in fact only documented his country of birth - Germany (despite living for the majority of his life only 100 km from neighbouring France).
Sander’s project is something of an historical anomaly, reflecting the contradictions of an important transitional moment in the history of Western society as revealed by his portrait-based artwork.
PART II
NON-PLACES – NON PERSONS
In Part 2, the social and cultural antitheses of the Middle Ages, late 20 Century and early 21 Century super modernity is explored.
How does medieval man differ from his contemporary counterpart?
For Augé, super modernity has three main characteristics.
The overabundance of events: The grand narratives of the past have dissolved into a sea of information located, or rather compressed, into the present. For Augé, ‘time today is no longer a principle of intelligibility’, where an ‘afterwards is explainable in terms of what has gone before’. The present is overloaded with information (the absorbing of information) which makes the intersecting of a personal history (in the making) with a social and more general history impossible. Excess is the dominant characteristic of our ‘time’.
Spatial overabundance: super modernity’s concrete outcome involves considerable physical changes in scale (urban concentration), spectacular acceleration in the means of transport (high speed roads railways, airport), proliferation of imagined and imaginary references (media, television, film, Internet, etc.).
Individualisation of references: modern and pre-modern man, in Augé’s view tended to accept established paradigms, such as religion, as cosmologies, rather than interpret the world analytically, whereas ‘…in (contemporary) western society the individual wants to be a world unto himself; he intends to interpret the information delivered to him by himself and for himself’. (M. Augé, 1992, 12-18).
In broad terms Taylor’s final definition in his essay The Category of the Person reinforces Augés third category of super modernity, the individualisation of references. In Taylor’s modern phase, the self no longer interprets the world subjectively. A self-defining atomist objectifies the world and determines his own purposes or finds them in his own desires. Science takes the place and role of religion, transforming an ecclesiastical and celestial order into a rational and modernist framework. No longer able to situate himself in or feel himself a part of a greater cosmological whole, modern man now justifies society in utilitarian, or instrumentalist terms.
Non–places, an introduction to an anthropology of super modernity, is, however, based upon a curious conceit. As Augé himself states, ‘Identity and relations (between people) lie at the heart of all spatial arrangements classically studied by anthropology’. (M. Augé, 1992, 58). However at the heart of Augé’ s thesis, the anthropological perimeters have been repositioned. Augé concentrates on the relationship and dynamic between people and a notion of ‘place’, and in particular a ‘super modern non-place’, which he defines in opposition to a ‘modern’ space.
The hypothesis advanced here is that super modernity produces non-places, meaning places which are not themselves anthropological places and which, unlike Baudelairean modernity, do not integrate with earlier places. A world thus surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral, offers the anthropologist a new object. (M. Augé, 1992, 78).
Central to Augé’s thesis is the idea of non-place: 'If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a non-space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place’. (M. Augé, 1992, 78).
The distinction between places and non-places derives from the opposition between place and space, not between non-place and place. Space is a ‘frequented place’, meaning it serves primarily as a transitory area for people to pass through; an airport, a road, a drive-thru restaurant, etc. It connotes a sense of function and use value that we might inscribe to a conveyer belt in a factory, i.e., it serves a purpose that can be quantified and measured. A subway tunnel for example, enables the flow of people from A to B, it has no other function and its totality can be understood in terms mathematical calculation (statistics). Its space can be measured (hundred metres long, two metres in diameter etc.), its function and capacity quantified. A non-space is a place, an area, which potentially has the presence of history, of culture aura, etc.; instead, it is has the function of a space. It is a space place - transitory, functional and a-historical. Significantly, as we have seen, Augé describes in great detail a ‘super modern non-place’, which he defines in opposition to a ‘modern’ space, but he does not seek to define or describe the individual who inhabits this non-space.
Rather than study and describe man, his/her identity and relations, Augé elects to reveal man through a sort of anthropomorphisation of his constructed physical spaces. This premise, this fetishisation of social relations onto urban landscapes, is in itself deeply revealing. In a sense it fulfils Marx’s prophecy that in a deeply alienated and capitalist society, social interaction is replaced by the exchange of goods (Augé’s is an urban reading of social relations).
To a certain extent, Augé’s third definition of super modernity, The Individualisation of Reference, does refer to the individual within a Super Modern context. Augé fails however to name and describe a super modern individual. The individual that Augé conceives remains the same individual that Taylor describes, and is essentially modern. This person, as he writes of modern spaces, is still defined relationally, historically and in terms of identity.
Is it possible, drawing upon the essay’s sociological and anthropological foundations and by referring to Augé’s three characteristics of Super Modernity to define a super modern individual? In seeking an answer to this question, who inhabits Auges Non places? The contemporary German artist Thomas Ruff (1953-) ventures further afield that Augé.
Ruff’s monolithic photographic portraits of his contemporaries dating from 1986 onwards represents a radical departure in the oeuvre of portraiture.
The works locate themselves very much within the traditions of the genre, framing their subject either in frontal or three-quarter head and shoulder views. The work’s high aesthetic and technical resolution firmly conceptualises the works within a fine art tradition. Ruffs portraits, or perhaps more pertinently, his subjects, however, are documented in such a way (seriality, magnification, high-resolution, lack of expression) - as to convey and impose the objectivity, rather than the traditional subjectivity of the artist’s ‘interpretation’ of the viewer. Ruff famously stated, “My portraits do not convey anything beyond the surface appearance of the sitter”. (Freidus Marc. 1991 Parkett, no.28, )
This departure, the objectification of the viewer, combined with the objectivity of the artist has been repeatedly framed in art criticism in terms of photography, seriality and the genre of portraiture.
It is perhaps more revealing to focus on the contemporary resonance, the shocking power of Ruff images in terms of identity and individualism in contemporary western society. Integral to this argument is the view that in any past era Ruff portraits would have simply been baffling and meaningless: why photograph people in such a cold / objective way? Ruff’s objectified subjects are shocking because their image resonate, touching raw and unsettling sentiments close to the modern individual; sentiments of alienation and objectification.
Ruff’s portraits convey an idea of a non person, a person who exists outside of a historical and social context. It is not so much that Ruff images ‘do not convey anything beyond the surface appearance of the sitter’, rather it is that the historical and social parameters that we use to frame a sense of identity are absent, the viewer is confronted with a totalising super modernist idea of identity: pure machine, pure reproduction, pure objectification.
Augé’s three ‘characterisations’ represent broadly identified and accepted post-modern ‘notions’ associated with our age, his particular interpretation reflects and serves his anthropological perspective and biases.
By referring to Augé’s three characterisations of super modernity to frame the individual rather than culture, and in particular to examine the dynamic between the individual and the social mass, we have a framework for introducing a wider social/anthropological perspective to frame a super modern individual.
Whereas the super modern individual is saturated with an excess of space and information, it is also possible to perceive this individual to be struggling with a globalised social context within which to attempt to frame a sense of self-identity. Here the subject is not so much the freeways, airports and factories of modern life; and the globalisation of media and information, but rather the effect of modernism’s excesses on social relations and the individual.
Three aspects (social characteristics) of super modernity deserve particular attention; the excessive but abstracted social space that it creates; the narrowing of socio geographic space and the ensuing dissolution of cultural difference brought about by globalisation.
Instead of thinking in terms of excessive information, let us think in terms of an excess of people.
In contemporary western society, a (cult)ure of the individual, his/her liberties, rights and self-fulfilment, is all-pervasive. However, this same individual whose experience of life is also increasingly egocentric and individual, bears witness to an omnipresent vision of themselves in the mirror of the mass media, on an order and scale of many millions of other individuals. Within this context, the individual no longer simply relates his day-to-day existence to his/her immediate social milieu, the people we identify with because they are part of our culture and society, but has to construct a sense of self within an imploded mass society. A significant difference between these two worlds, the pre- and post- mass-mediated western society, is the degree of abstraction in social relations that the individual negotiates. In a single day the modern individual might witness thousands of images of other ‘people’; the individual is bombarded with endless alien faces, abstracted from any meaningful social context.
This abstracted self perception within the mass is reinforced by constant polling, either actively, such as in elections (51% voted for...), indirectly in terms of a poll (51% approve...) or passively in terms of TV ratings (9.5 million watched...)
This excessive social space is further compounded by the spatial over abundance that Auges describes. But instead of thinking in terms of excessive space, let us think in terms of a narrowing of space distances; in short globalisation. In terms of this recent social and cultural phenomenon it is helpful to refer back to the paper’s initial anthropological definition of society.
Nevertheless, within this understanding of a porous, malleable and evolving whole, Augé falls back on the significance of a concrete and symbolic construction of space, an ‘anthropological place’, in which the components of shared and individual identity are located. These ‘anthropological places’, Augé states, have three characteristics in common. They want to be – people want them to be – places of identity, of relations and of history. (M. Augé, 1992, 24).
In a globalised environment, the very foundations of a traditional society, the foundations within which the individual creates a sense of self-identity are undermined.
Perhaps the artist who is most faithfully recording this changing - globalising world is Andreas Gursky. In his huge monolithic photographs we see a world dominated by vast super structures, airports, stock exchange floors, whole enclosed artificial beach environments, cattle processing yards and sea-like masses of people attending pop concerts.
The overriding sentiment of Gursky’s relationship to his subject matter is one of distance and objectivity (though it is important to note that he manipulates his images using the latest new media technologies). His technique and approach is consistent. In effect Gursky takes the same image again and again, the same way; each time seeking to create a composition in which there is no centre or single focus point - at heart Gursky is a formalist. Cattle and people, supermarkets and ceiling lighting systems, become shapes and forms: objects.
The same can be said of the globalised world that so neatly fits Gursky’s formal approach. Globalisation has no centre, it is a totality of one, where all difference is antagonistic to the overriding market forces and economies of scale that dominate and presuppose this paradigm.
Already in any one of a hundred western counties, on the same day, millions of individuals can watch the same film, dressed in their identical ‘Levi’ jeans and ‘Nike’ shoes whilst ‘enjoying’ the same ‘Starbucks’ coffee. After the film the same individuals can visit their local franchised Museum of Contemporary Art (to naturally view some Gursky’s images) and then go home to the same CNN news service.
What is taking place on a global scale between countries, where the differences between cultures are being negated by globalisation, on a local level, as experience d by communities, families and individuals, is perhaps, one of the most significant social, economic and cultural transformations of the world’s civilisations to have ever taken place.
Whereas in this period of transformation, where both modern and super modern (even pre modern) social and cultural contexts and identities co-exist, the cultural tapestry appears abundantly rich; current globalisation trends mark out a future of ever increasing social and cultural monopoly.
In this scenario, not only will fields of science (such as anthropology –the study of the cultural other in the present), need to adapt and evolve, but new conceptions of society, self identity and individualism, not dependent on a system…“ of others, the ethnic or cultural other… as a reference for a system of differences”.…need be reconsidered
Conclusion:
Non Individuals of super modernity
In one society, the Middle Ages, the individual self-identity and self-conception is that of the wider group. In a Modern context, a self-defining atomist objectifies the world and determines his own purposes or finds them in his own desires. In each case, the individual is the product and reflection of the socio economic paradigms in which he / she lives. Society frames the individual.
The super modern context in which Augé contextualises the individual, characterised by an excess of information and space, however, provides a contradictory context for the contemporary individual to conceive and frame him or herself. On the one hand a (cult)ure of the individual is all-pervasive – on the other, this same individual bears witness to an omnipresent vision of themselves in the mirror of a mass, globalising socio-economic culture.
How does the individual reconcile these contradictions?
Within these polar extremes of pre and post modern conceptions of society and individuality, profound social, cultural and geographic similarities are starting to emerge. Both the Medieval and the Non person of super modernity are dominated by single orthodoxies: religion and consumerism. In both these societies, a cultural other is absent: In the Middle Ages the individual rarely ventured beyond his birthplace and immediate society, his / her universe. In a super modern context, globalisation works towards cultural homogenisation; the coming together of all cultures and societies into a single universality. Furthermore, if we refer back to Gursky’s contemporary portraits of super modernity, we witness another startling similarity, the individual receding from centre stage. In Gursky’s oeuvre, the individual is always part of a social context.
Whilst exploring similar issues and artists in her essay from Somebody to Nobody, Melissa Feldman, seeks to resolve societies present contradictory, mass social and individual impulses by suggesting that
‘in an increasingly anomic society, we are actually increasing sustained in the private havens of sociability and communication. The ties of family and friendship … protect us from the onslaught of systematic alienation that govern social relation at large.’ ( M. Feldman. 1998, 56).
Feldman’s reasoning, in my opinion, reflects a nostalgia for a nuclear type family base for society, one that doesn’t sustain itself in light of chronic divorce rates (in the west, 2/3 of marriages now ending this way), and the super modern excesses of space and information described in this essay.
So what sort of social model characterises our age?
The answer, I believe, lies in the excess of information which dominates our cultural and social landscape. Here, I am thinking in terms of the abstracted self which the mass media address through constant polling, either actively, such as in elections, or indirectly in terms of a poll or passively in terms of TV ratings.
Within this framework, the modern individual, still enjoys considerable autonomy, however, this independent self exists within a very social model of mass self conception shared by all other individuals. This super modern, non individual, for example, is free to think and express his / her opinions, but there is also a sense where he /she can simply read a newspaper and be told that 63 % of me believes that abortion should be legal, whilst only 36 % of me regards Bush’s gulf war to be a good idea. As a super modern non individual, I can hold extreme political views, but I have to acknowledge that I exist within a centralist political framework. As a super modern non individual, I am free to express my unique identity through the commodities I consume; only I have to accept to consume the same commodities as everyone else.
Starting in Holland, and spreading across the western world within a couple of years (very much as an expression and product of a globalising model of world culture)
the reality television program Big Brother, acts as something of a new kind model for individual identity, social relations and society. The game draws together a group of young people from a distinctly multi cultural society to live together in a televised house: there is explicitly no sense of cultural otherness within this micro society.
Within the game’s framework, all the participants are outwardly encouraged to freely express their opinions and self-identities. Both the contestants and spectators have the right to vote and play a role in determining their own and the shows destiny. In this interactive micro cosmos of society, constant polling and voting saturates the format; everyone is constantly informed of everyone else’s opinions and views on everything. Big Brother is literally an extended televised poll: 54 % believe Natasha over reacted to Paul’s teasing, 60 % believe that Jenny and John would make a good couple, 77% voted to evict Sally, 82 % believe Sandra doesn’t do enough house work and finally 90 % approve the shows format!!!
In this model, the realm of social relations and self-identity is very much transported into the public / social domain. This is true, not only in a televised sense, but in a symbolic / allegoric sense as well. The show is constantly reminding the individual of his / her new submissive role; the contestant’s real autonomy is limited within this new highly socialised context. John the contestant might think that he acted appropriately in a given situation, however, if the opinion polls reveal otherwise and he is evicted, it doesn’t really matter what he thought – in the face of the dominant medium he will probably even re-evaluate his own self-opinion! In this new model, what the individual thinks matters only within the social context of his / her vote amongst millions of other votes.
By polling the programs mass audience and simultaneously televising the results, Big Brother plays both an active and passive role in defining and reaffirming society’s values. The model of eviction creates a ‘winner’ (the most popular contestant gets to remain in the house), the masses deciding which contestant best reflects society’s values and character.
Typically, the show’s climax is met with a chorus of disapproval from cultural commentators; the self-defining modernist of yesteryear (who never did any house cleaning but was very witty) is evicted in the first round. The most boring and ordinary person, the contestant who offended the least number of viewers and who was the most social (least alienated), in effect, the best non individual, taking theprize.
Bibliography
In order of appearance in paper
Auge, Marc. 1995. Non-places : introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London : Verso
Charles Taylor 1985 “The Category of the Person” Cambridge University Press
Goetz, Hans-Werner. 1993 Life in the Middle Ages : from the seventh to the thirteenth century. Imprint Notre Dame, Ind : University of Notre Dame Press
Ullmann, Walter 1967 The individual and society in the Middle Age. London : Methuen.
Jack Crittenden 1992 Beyond individualism Oxford University Press New York
August Sander 1973`Photograaper extrordinary Gunther SanderThames and Hudson, London
Sander, August. 1986. August Sander :citizens of the twentieth century : portrait photographs, Cambridge, Mass : MIT Press
Joanna Woodall. 1997. Portraiture : facing the subject Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press
Freidus Marc.. 1991. Lack of faith : on Thomas Ruff / [by] Marc Freidus. Parkett, no.28, 1991
Peter Galassi. 2001. Andreas Gursky . New York : Museum of Modern Art : distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc
Feldman, Melissa E. 1994 Face-off : the portrait in recent art . Essay by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh. Imprint Philadelphia, Pa : Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania
Further reading:
Steven Lukes 1973 Individualism Great Britain self published
Gordon fraser1977 August sander Aperture Inc USA
Andreas Gursky 1995 Parkett N. 44
Morris, Colin, 1972 The discovery of the individual, 1050-1200 /Colin Morris.
Lukes, Steven. 1973. Individualism. Steven Lukes. Oxford : Blackwell , 1973
Howells, Bernard. 1996. Baudelaire : individualism, dandyism and the philosophy of history . Oxford : European Humanities
Pohlen, Annelie. Deep surface / [by] Annelie Pohlen. Per.Sub.
Ruff, Thomas, 1958- Artforum, Apr 1991, pp.114-118
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