(on the critical definitions that guide
the praxis carried out in aleph, Acción Paralela and arts.zin as a
micro-constellation of independent editorial projects)
by José Luis Brea
“So the model nature of production turns out to be decisive, that
firstly, instructs other producers in the production process, and secondly, is
able to place an improved structure at their disposal. The more consumers it
leads to the production process, the better this structure will be; in a word:
if it is in a position to turn readers into producers”.
—Walter Benjamin, The author as producer 1934
1. First paradox (it is really more a
“paralogism”): that one cannot talk about independence independently. Any kind
of independence would have to be “from something”. Independence, in order to
become a reality, inevitably depends on... what it aspires to not depending on;
at least, in order to define itself. But this is not just a mere play on words:
the structure of this logical connection is also unfortunately the structure of
the entire effective, practical reality of independence — a paralogical
reality, it is true, however often it occurs in history, or in the real world
(that is, in the phantasmagoric extended area of the symptom).
2. Let’s imagine it like a cutting
edge. Not a mere unsteady edge —like the ones that they analyse in disaster
theory applied to the study of morphogenesis — between two fabrics, and not
this gesticulative hesitant kind of difference. It’s more like a fold: like a displaced
point at which something ceases simultaneously to be two things that it is at
the same time. It is on this very machine-like potential that a good knife, or
any good sharp weapon, depends to be effective. It is something that depends on
its emptied condition — a good knife-edge is not produced by reducing its
thickness, but by the degree of perfection with which a fold (around a void
that is defined in this gesture as its interior nature) avoids the existence of
two planes that cross at this point and acquire a (dis)continuous form,(and the
force it exerts inwardly later enables it to exert this force outwardly). As it
is “the place where the points meet” which is both and neither of them at the
same time, living on this edge involves the dangers that a tightrope walker
would experience if he were condemned to walk along a series of sharpened
intertwined blades.
3. However its carnal dangerousness
(which is less civic than vital) excessively fosters its fallacious venial
appeals, and the emptiness (that is more paranoid than paratactic) of its
rhetoric. Let’s call this the second paradox of independence: the fact that it
is as easy to declare independence as it is difficult to actually achieve in
the real sense,(you know what I mean). With regard to how difficult it is to
achieve: refer to the following. With regard to how easy it is to declare, the
fact that in this declaration it is the logic of its false consciousness that
is being expressed. As Debord was to state in the penultimate thesis on his Society,
it does not tend to clarify itself.
4. If the fold by which independence
could be defined —never as an absolute limit, but as a degree of tension where
points meet or fail to meet— had to be expressed with reference to the planes
that cross at this point, these would be —if we are talking about editorial
projects in the specific field of the visual arts— the institutional plane
(Art) and the market. Or perhaps to be more precise, the planes formed by those
initiatives that run on public resources and the others that are run on private
ones —as far as we know, there are no others. If in other publishing fields it
is the market that acts as an arbitrator —so independence would be defined by
the distance that they manage to place in the way of its dictates— in the field
of the visual arts (here, among ourselves) financing mainly comes from public
funds that are distributed to a greater or lesser extent by administrative
bodies. Even the remaining area that in our sphere formalises a minimum private
market appears when it manages to do so to be merely subsidiary —and nearly
always subsidised. Any independent initiative that emerges from civil society
in our milieu, has its sword of Damocles in this unavoidable evident reality,
as well as problems to establish its critical distance.
5. Having defined its cutting planes,
let’s also describe its folding (and unfolding) axis. At one end the limit
would be the maximisation of the audience —at the other, a willingness to be
critical, and to be even prepared to risk zero visibility. The former
stipulates a law that is valid not only for the market —in areas where it is
predominant its implacable nature is obvious, whenever audience and customers
coincide- but also for the institutional domain, even when this equation does
not appear to be so obvious and immediate in this. But it is, and twice over:
firstly because it is legitimate to demand that what is produced with the
public’s money should satisfy interests that are also presumably universal
(what in classical times described the common good, which is the basis of any
call for public service), and secondly -an instrumental interest this time—
because the equation between maximising the audience and forming public opinion
has as its ultimate beneficiary the same person who has the job of authorising
payment —the politician who carries out their responsibility as the person
administrating public services. To put it another way: here customers and
audience also coincide —thanks to the self-seeking mediation of a third element
that has been interposed (between institution and audience). This is a critique
implemented to be useful in media circles —and the challenge and problem it
faces is how to get its opinions and critical distance to pass underneath the
task and real mission that it is based on.
6. At the other extreme —where its
critical purpose prevails— the main risk is formed by zero visibility (the
secondary risk is its resulting lack of profitability.) However, we are
operating in this field and what we call independence —perhaps we ought to call
it micro-dependence, or relative independence— focuses on the design of a
movement that we could describe as being doubly negative: it is a non-market
and non-institution at the same time (it has to be said for Krauss’s admirers),
even though it is aware that this double negation does not absolve it of its
double- dependence, although this is less. When it formulates its structure, it
excludes that fatal agreement between audience and customers which is a
characteristic feature of the market structure, but it also excludes at the
same time the a priori presupposition that its activities were of public
interest and that these should be compulsorily covered by an extended welfare
state model. To put it another way: it has an origin and a purpose —and appeals
to a target— in the strict sphere of civil society, as an autonomous initiative
— as well as through the free expression of their interest that the latter
actually show, beyond any a priori presuppositions, through the practical
effectiveness of their reading activities.
7. There
are two possible conditions to make this schematic outline sustainable.
Firstly: its minority nature—the more micro that the structure is, the less
manipulation it requires to balance expenditure and audience share. And
secondly: the soundness of its critical contents. Lacking support from tools
that implement its credibility through the position of strength that they
occupy in the institutional system, its only source of power (as an instigator
of the public interest) comes from its participation in the free public game of
argument, and of publicly displaying thoughts and contrasting them. It is true
that this means that it is enormously fragile —and if you like it makes it
certain that it will quickly disappear as soon as its level of cognitive
interest declines— but at the same time it ensures the tremendous relevance of
its existence. Operating in a highly competitive system in which practically
all broadcasting activity is reinforced —either by positions of strength in the
institutional system, or by various market manipulations of the audience backed
up by resorting to what Bourdieu called “lowering the level”— its neglected
position is the best imaginable guarantee of its tremendous critical potential
that its self-managed freedom of action (the production of knowledge), to
provide effective contents of critical knowledge— may manage to lead to. If it
manages to do so —and as long as it manages to do so.
8. There is an implicit
correlation between independence and self-publishing. To put it another way, it
only makes sense to talk about independence when we refer to the effective
launching of a system that enables an author or a given group of authors to
critically maintain independent control of all the interventions and devices
that affect it when it places its product in the public realm. So in a certain
sense, effectively exercising independence is a natural part of the age of
critical-experimental development for a post avant-garde for whom the
commitment to inherent self-questioning has ceased to act centripetally on the
structure of the work itself (and its language) to aim its critical activities
at the machinery that surrounds it and decides its social purpose, and at all
the interventions that construct its symbolic, artistic or cultural value. For
us, this is the meaning that is implicit in the slogan of the author as
producer that is still valid —it is same one that so many contemporary artists
(as producers, even self-producers) are making their very own at the present
time.
9. The technical
characteristics of electronic publishing favour the emergence of these kinds of
(we could say) micro-dependent structures. Three of them in particular: 1. The
low cost (relative, of course) of the infrastructure required to enable anyone
who wants to do so to be able to provide a visible presence for the expression
of their opinions and their active participation as far as interpretative
comparisons are concerned; 2. the practical convergence in the technological
domain of production, distribution and reception devices (the computer, in
fact, as studiogallery- museum or as pen-book-bookshop); and 3. their
effectiveness in bringing the abstract level of critical-cognitive productivity
and the effective fluctuations in the audience closer together in real time.
This was achieved through a quality that is inherent to the audience of the
future,(becoming readers/ receivers,) in the electronic sphere: its active
character —when we are talking about pull technologies.
and 10. Having described
the entire structure, we will now describe the aims (and let’s leave the
readers to assess its possible coverage). First: the (micro)production process
in the public sphere in a temporary autonomous, or if you prefer, provisionally
micro(in)dependent area —where we could present our opinions and
interpretations to people, as well as our cognitive and critical production
activities. Second: encouraging responsive talk-back structures that make it
easier for these activities to provide opportunities for contrast even in their
own space. Third: the framework of open structures with potential for operating
in a rhizome constellation (by opening up hyper-links to third projects that
are linkable or have actually been linked up). Fourth: the critical
fragmentation of the sphere of public opinion, by opposing the strategies
carried out by institutions and the market to form a consensus and homogenised
attitudes (backed up above all by tactical manipulation by the media on a scale
that was unparalleled, even in this country), to introduce alternative lines of
opinion. Not only its own efficiency contributes to this effect — but
especially what together with Benjamin we would call its model character. This
is the capacity that the activity process has to lead to the structure being
reused, with different ways of implementing its use (it is here that
readers/spectators also becomes users, and where they themselves play with
their ability to become medium producers) of the structure that we have tested
out as an experience. And fifth, to finish off: the proportion of
interpretative and critical materials that make it possible for any recipient
to take part in the understanding and active development of these increasingly
problematic fields that form areas with complex connections to our present —as
instability, and as a displaced point, as well as to the world today as a
transformable historic transition that we can take part in. _
José Luis Brea
is the editor of Acción Paralela (www.accpar.org), aleph-arts.org (www.aleph-arts.org) and arts.zin (www.
artszin.net).