Essay Proposal Task 4

Title:

Panopticism

Points of essay:

Jeremy Benthams' Panopticon
Foucaults theory of Panopticism
How this relates to current day life
Surveyed Society
How artists can mould viewers to see their art. Power and Control
Conclusion tying back to Foucaults theory

“No-one knows precisely how many cameras there are in the UK, but the estimates go as high as 4.5 million” BBC website
This case study is helpful for my essay as I would like to look at how surveillance is affecting our current life. It also ties in well with D.Lyon's work on 'surveillance and society'


“Now the means of surveillance flow freely through domestic spaces” D.Lyon ‘Surveillance and Society’ (2002)


‘Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.’ (Foucault, 1975)
This can be used to tie in the explantion of the building itself into Foucaults theories of how the effects of the building can be used as a metaphor for how our society is controlled by a greater power.

“He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection". [Foucault 1995].


‘individual is produced by nature; the subject by culture’ John Fiske
Helps to explain the point that it is your surroundings that affect you and mould you, even if your mind doesn't notice it. 


'1984' George Orwell.
I plan on using this story to show how people can become mindless and controllable.

Essay Ideas

Favourite points from lectures-

Panopticism
Foucault - shift in disciplinary techniques from physical control to the subtle mental control.
'how to put him where he is most useful: this is discipline in my sense'

relationship between power, knowledge and the body

'docile bodies'

- how this control work with art. How the artist makes the viewer react in the way they want

'gentle punishment' (Danaher, Schriato and Webb 2000)

Vito Acconi 'Following Piece' (1960)
Chris Burdn 'Samsung' (1985)

Tate Britian


Identity
How culture affects our identity

John Fiske 'the individual is produced by nature, the subject produced by culture'

Jaques Lacon 'hommelette' the man omlette

Subjectivities are fragile

'discourse analysis' Foucault


Pop culture

Taking art away from the white cute space

Walter Benjamin

Making people physically walk up steps to get to the height of artwork. Personal Pilgramige to the work. It has a higher status than you.

'Mechanical Reproduction changes the reaction of art towards the masses'

Othering Task 3

Othering in the media is unfortunately something that seems to be unavoidable. Possibly because the designers of our media have no concept of the composition of their work, or because they mean to make people feel a certain way, and hope they opt for the piece or the advert that will make them feel better.

The piece that I have looked at for this case study is from the Guardian Newspaper. I noticed this while reading through, and although in the photo you can't actually read the text I will explain how this double page spread applies to othering.

On the left there is an article called 'green fashion empire to shut up to 260 stores', where Sir Phillip Green is explaining that the current economic slump is threatening our high streets and possibly causing 260 of it's shops to close down. Below this, perfectly holding up the article about our economic crisis is a Brad Pitt movie advert called 'moneyball', made of a solid green background which is very noticeably the shade of money. Then on the accompanying page an advert that takes up more than fifty percent of the space the page holds is for advertising the new iPad 2, from £399, so much for an economic crisis?

The size of these two adverts shows that the people reading this newspaper don't want to focus on the economic crisis, they would rather feel good about them selves by indulging in commodities that are priced incredibly highly.

Identity

Theories of Identity:

ESSENTIALISM
- our bioligical make up makes us who we are
-an inner essance that makes us us
- post modern theorists disagree, anti essentialist

Phisiognomy, phrenology.
Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) the notion that criminal tendencies are inherited. You can see by the shape of someone face. (images on slide)

Hieronymous Bosch (1450 - 1516) Christ carrying the cross, oil on panel

Chris Pfili, Holy Virgin Mary 1996

• pre modern identity – personal identity is stable – defined by long standing roles

• Modern identity – modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. Possibility to start ‘choosing’ your identity, rather than simply being born into it. People start to ‘worry’ about who they are

• Post-modern identity – accepts a ‘fragmented ‘self’. Identity is constructed

 

PRE MODERN IDENTITY

farm work, soldier, factory worker, housewife

Charles Baudelaire – The Painter of Modern Life (1863)

introduces the concept of the gentleman stroller

Thorstein Veblen – Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

Conspicous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure

Georg Simmel – The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903)

Trickle down theory

Emulation

Distinction

The Mask of Fashion

‘The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone,

as when one is a stranger without relations, among many physically close persons, at a party, on the train,

or in the traffic of a large city’ 

FOUCAULT DISCOURCE ANALYSIS

Identity is constructed out of the discources available to us.

Discource - '...a set of recurring statements that define a particular cultural 'object' (e.g madness, criminality, sexuality) and provide concepts and terms through which such an object can be studied and discussed.' Cavallaro (2001)

Possible discourses

- age - class - gender - nationality - race/ethnicity - sexual prientation - education - income etc...

OTHERNESS

Class

humphrey spender/mass observation, worktown project 1937

Nationality

Alexander McQueen, Highland Rape collection, autumn/winter 1995 - 6

Race/Ethnicity

Chris Ofili, No woman no cry 1998

Emily Bates, dress created using her own hair

Gender and Sexuality

Flapper 1925

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Stills, 1977 - 80

Sam Taylor Wood 1993

The postmodern condition:

Liquid modernity and liquid love

Identity is constructed through our social experience.

Erving Goffman The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)

Goffman saw life as ‘theatre’, made up of ‘encounters’ and ‘performances’

For Goffman the self is a series of facades 

Zygmunt Bauman

Identity 2004

Liquid Modernity 2000

Liquid Love 2003

‘In airports and other public spaces, people with mobile-phone headset attachments walk around, talking aloud and alone, like paranoid schizophrenics, oblivious to their immediate surroundings.

Introspection is a disappearing act. Faced with moments alone in their cars, on the street or at supermarket checkouts, more and more people do not collect their thoughts, but scan their mobile phone messages for shreds of evidence that someone, somewhere may need or want them.’ 

“Identity” is a hopelessly ambiguous idea and a

double-edged sword.  It may be a war-cry of

individuals, or of the communities that wish to be

imagined by them.  At one time the edge of identity

is turned against “collective pressures” by

individuals who resent conformity and hold dear

their own ways of living (which “the group” would

decry as prejudices) and their own ways of living

(which “the group” would condemn as cases of

“deviation” or “silliness”, but at any rate of

abnormality, needing to be cured or punished’

Bauman (2004), Identity, page 76

Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin
‘The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ 1936

Institute of Social Research, University of Frankfurt, 1923-33

            University of Columbia New York 1933-47

            University of Frankfurt, 1949-

Theodore Adorno

Max Horkheimer

Herbert Marcuse

Leo Lowenthal                      

Walter Benjamin – Stayed in EU, killed himself in Spain

- group of thinkers. Radical. Marxist thought

How do people let evil dictators come to power?
Adorno Horkheimer – believed the media persuaded people.

Marxist.org – Marxist publications for free. Benjamins Essay is on here
Idea of art formulated a long time ago that was near myth. This essay modernises the conception of art. Our notion of art radically altered by advances in technology.

‘The transformation of the superstructure, which takes place far more slowly than that of the substructure, has taken more than half a century to manifest in all areas of culture the change in the conditions of production. Only today can it be indicated what form this has taken. Certain prognostic requirements should be met by these statements. However, theses about the art of the proletariat after its assumption of power or about the art of a classless society would have less bearing on these demands than theses about the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production. Their dialectic is no less noticeable in the superstructure than in the economy. It would therefore be wrong to underestimate the value of such theses as a weapon. They brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery – concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable) application would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense. The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from the more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art.’

New technologies by reproduction e.g the printing press, lithographic and photographic. Massive scale

What effects the reproduced have on the original. Status. How does the original change?

Guttenberg oress 1440. Stops education being for the elite. Could reproducing art have the same affect?
Becomes less obvious which has more authority, the original or the copy

Technological Reproduction of Art removes-

Presence             -

Authenticity        -         AURA

Authority           -

Mona Lisa- free to look at whenever, wherever. People have the ability to come to their own conclusions. Recontextualised. Reproducing takes it into areas it isn’t supposed to be in. Pop culture, fashion, kitsch. Kitsch recycling.

We now approach the Mona Lisa saying ‘Hay theres that picture that I’ve seen before’ changes how you approach it. The status and the power of the work is diminished/ eroded. The audience creates interpretations for themselves.

‘One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements. Their most powerful agent is the film. Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage.’

Cult Value

Earliest art forms, object of magic, cults, mystery, we not meant for display, were in the back dark parts of caves.
Religious art, cult art.

The cult of ritualistic value of art still remains. Superstitious mysticism.

This can be seen in the way people travel to galleries to see artwork.

Like a Pilgrimage.  Artwork is up steps so you physically have to raise  yourself to the artwork. You are beneath it.

One has to follow a ritual. A pre prescribed way.

You are supposed to feel a certain way, to blindly follow

-Now technology is taking art out of this ritual. Out of the temple of culture. Shift of power from the institution to the individual.

Louise Lawler- Takes photos of fine art out of their normal place.

We can redraw the hierarchy, structure with technology. The work of art becomes designed for reproduction.

Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans(1979) took a photo of  Walker Evans, Hale County, Alabama (1936) and called it her own. Is it a new work because she took the photo? She has taken to context from the image and makes it a piece about what art can be/ get away with.

Digital reproduction – new technologies allowing us to reshape power structures.

The cult of the beautiful

New technologies are making the original seem outdated, irrelevant.

e.g painting had to change with the creation of the camera and the photograph. An attempt to reintroduce Aura to art as new technologies take it away.

-the notion of beauty

- art was never meant to be seen by the masses.

New technologies make it for everyone.

Cinema radically threaten/ changes art

Dunhamel- ‘Mechanical Reproduction changes the reaction of art towards the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into a progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterised by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert’written at the same time as Benjamin.

Technological reproduction of art removes-

Creativity -

Genius -

Eternal value -

Tradition -                              AURA

Authority -

Authenticity -

Autonomy -

Distance -

Mystery –

Something is better than you. Allowing Fascism. Benjamin says that very similar to how we look at art.