[nettime-see] vj vs. contemporary art

[dunja kukovec <melon@skylined.org>]

VJ in Contemporary Art Environment
by Dunja Kukovec

Assembled for speaking/presenation on 320x240.org, Vis Island, Croatia, 
august 2003

Disclaimer: The text is partly following the logic of VJ-jing. It is 
written with quotations and random thoughts. It is one of the 
perspectives how to see VJ-ing. Instead of fixed meanings, the process 
and discourse are considered as starting-posts. The real and virtual, 
the right and wrong depend on the context. Everyday is revolution.

In general it is about VJ-ing, art history and spaces of representation 
and action. However, for the creative person, as I have heard so many 
times from the VJs personally, it is not important if VJ-ing is art or 
not, and if it is played on a street, club, museum or special events. 
Museum or galleries can be seen just as the places for use, for squat.

0. Introduction

Quotes from various males on the scene:
Lev Manovich quote: "This generation does not care if their work is 
called art or design. This generation is no longer interested in "media 
critique" which preoccupied media artists of the last two decades; 
instead it is engaged in software critique. This generation writes its 
own software code to create their own cultural systems, instead of using 
samples of commercial media. The result is the new modernism of data 
visualizations, vector nets, pixel-thin grids and arrows: Bauhaus design 
in the service of information design. Instead the Baroque assault of 
commercial media, Flash generation serves us the modernist aesthetics 
and rationality of software. Information design is used as tool to make 
sense of reality while programming becomes a tool of empowerment." 
Douglas Crimp quote in "On the Museum's Ruins", with reference to Walter 
Benjamin: "Through reproductive technology, postmodernist art dispenses 
with the aura. The fiction of the creating subject gives way to the 
frank confiscation, quotation, excerptation, accumulation and repetition 
of already existing images. Notions of originality, authenticity and 
presence, essential to the ordered discourse of the museum, are 
undermined." Boris Groys quote: "The less an artwork differs visually 
from a profane object, the more necessary it becomes to draw a clear 
distinction between the art context and the profane, everyday. It is 
when an artwork looks like a "normal thing" that it will require the 
contextualization and protection of the museum. The artwork lives longer 
and keeps its original form longer in the museum than an ordinary object 
does in "reality". That is why an ordinary thing looks more "alive" and 
more "real" in the museum than in reality itself. The difference between 
traditional, modernist and contemporary art strategies is relatively 
easy to describe. In the modernist tradition, the art context was 
regarded as stable - it was the idealized context of the universal 
museum. Innovation consisted in putting a new form, a new thing, in this 
stable context. In our time, the context is seen as changing and 
unstable. So the strategy of contemporary art consists of creating a 
specific context which can make a certain form or thing look other, new 
and interesting. Traditional art (and also one part new media art) is 
working on the level of form. Contemporary art is working on the level 
of context, framework, background, or of a new theoretical 
interpretation. But the goal is the same: to create a contrast between 
form and historical background, to make the form look other and new. 
Quote from Ha*kan Nilsson: "One could describe LPC as the new hippie 
generation. It's even in the name. The other side to the pleasure of LPC 
is not a strategy; it's a statement that there actually is pleasure. 
They seem to think that everything is really much easier than we have 
made it out to be. The musical experience of LPC is not simply based in 
Western culture; they use rhythms from all over the world, as if to make 
a statement about the global phenomenon of dancing. Behind the politics, 
behind all the weird mass medial mix of voices, one can almost sense LPC 
trying to communicate something like "relax, man, feel it!"

So these are the original samples which we will now remix.

1. History and representation

Although VJ culture might look autonomous, straight and no-contextual it 
is actually much more complex. VJ was primarily a collector and 
sometimes video artist now she is computer artist, or multimedia artist. 
A digital jockey after Coldcut. The broader it is becoming the more 
different types of VJ-ing exists: VJ as software art, VJ as found art, 
VJ as live art, VJ as activism, VJ as 3D art, VJ as public art, VJ as 
movie-making or photography...

VJ-ing can be see in a symbiosis with the sound. Historically VJ-ing is 
not only related to the history of visual images but goes hand in hand 
with the sound or rather music history - like medieval sculpture and 
painting erupted together with architecture. In terms of formalism it 
can be partly compared to the collage and partly to the classical method 
of dealing with a tool or material.

- VJ-ing with found images uses similar method as 'inventors' of music 
concrete (Musique Concrete (1948-1964) - Musique Concrete was music that 
was created using tape-recorded sounds that were altered by changes in 
pitch, duration, and amplitude. Also known as Tape Music, the methods 
that were used to create Musique Concrete became obsolete with the 
invention of the modular synthesizer).
- Audio video 'gesamtkunstwerk' performance of filmmaker Godfrey Reggio 
with composer Philip Glass entitled Koyaanisqaatsi echoes in Coldcut 
digital jockeyism.
- Self-produced visual material has analogy with experimental short 
movies and animations.
- And last but not least, specially developed software (randomizer) or 
even hardware is software art, and also hardware art.

Than..:)Art history practices of the second half of 20th century have 
many tools to understand VJ -ing as a form of art. Let's see:
-VJ-ing as a live performance.  It is event-like performance, like 
performance and happenings in 60-ties and 70-ties. If, for example, VJ 
project is part of a group exhibition it can be represented as a one-day 
performance.
-VJ-ing as a public art. Beside any public space also the club is a sort 
of public space. It is like "a natural' space for this type of art and 
it is kind of site-specific art form.
-VJ-ing as a live-movie show. To see VJ  performance in a cinema. People 
sit in theatre and watch. In a way this is similar to a museum-like 
performance or theatre show. (People like us)
Recently we have also seen VJ-ing as a software art, hardware art, and 
interactive art. From my point of view these kinds of practices are in a 
way the most productive and innovative.

VJ-ing should not be seen as a curtain or a coulisse but in a symbiosis 
with the sound. However, both can and also do exist without one-another. 
VJ material can be used as a projection; its perfect position is in any 
public space. (Mala galerija Ljubljana, videolux)

Now..:)Another clue question is which institutional framework will 
VJ-ing take? Think of a club as a part of the context and so of the 
final content, impact.
The inability to include VJ-ing in an exhibition results in the same 
problem as it is known with displaying the computer and Internet related 
arts. Museums and galleries somehow managed to get used to the dark 
rooms ("Video installations bring the great night into the museum--it is 
maybe their most important function. The museum space loses its own 
"institutional" light. Also control over the time of contemplation is 
passed from the visitor to the artwork.", Boris Groys) but museums and 
galleries in general didn't manage to build the temporary autonomous 
(media, club or social) zones - the temporal production and social 
spaces. If the museum and galleries continue to adapt so slow they will 
loose all these creative forms that need special way of representing. 
VJ-ing is already finding another solution - for example cinema - and so 
do few of the contemporary art institutions (ICA, London).

But does VJ-ing belong to cinema - where you sit down and the time of 
enter and exit is exact? Or does it belong to some other space, for 
example the museum or gallery - where the time of coming in and going 
out is loose and the standing mode is a habit? Probably the smartest 
solution is that old-fashioned cinema, gallery space and new media 
laboratories should converge in a new hybrid. /something like ICA, 
London or Witt de Witt in Rotterdam.


2.  Modern process and postmodern values

Illustratively postmodernity means chaos and convergence. Modernity 
means order and fixed meanings.
Basic and formal VJ elements:
Loop.
Almost all VJ performances are based on loop-ing, like contemporary 
electronic music. Loop is a form, which can mean a tool, a visual 
element or a genre.  Looping is demanding a special perception. It is 
tribal and it is global. It can be declarative, elegant or provocative. 
As Lev Manovich has shown; all nineteenth century pre-cinematic visual 
devices also relied on loops. Throughout the nineteenth century loops 
kept getting longer and longer - eventually turning into a feature 
narrative...Today, we witness the opposite movement - artists sampling 
short segments of feature films or TV shows, arranging them as loops, 
and exhibiting these loops in various video works.
Random.
In a machine world random is kind of bizarre. No machine can produce the 
true randomness. Correctly some random-like processes are called pseudo 
randomness. We look at random aesthetics as fascinating. It is on the 
edge where everything is connected and interrelated. It looks like there 
is no coincidence that this is exactly how it should be. Think of a 
winamp visuals or screensaver and simply think of a lucky dice.
Loop and random are elements in the recent art practices, their analogy 
is in Dada, Situationist, Cage, Eno and Glass.
Time frame.
Time frame like in 'media is the message'. Time is a message, and time 
is a context.  Western culture is based on time. VJ-ing is in a way a 
critique of this time, cause it is saying there is no time, time doesn't 
exist. It is endlessness; it is depending on individual perception on 
senses, and on feelings. It is on you to decide how long you will watch 
clips, there is no one who would tell or show you how long to watch VJ-ing.
Interactivity.
VJ-ing does care for communication. VJ-ing is not autonomous art form. 
It is interactive in many ways. The high-end is moving-detection software.
Authorship.
This is very complex theme to explain here in this essay. I would just 
stress that also art history will have to soundly redefine. The new 
method of valuing artist and teamwork will have to be developed. I would 
like to stress that you, as a creator or an artist, are not THE OWNER of 
the idea or of an artwork. You are  A REFERNCE and A CREDIT for further 
generations.

In these terms VJ-ing is postmodern art form. But than again, why it is 
not simply logical or by default that VJ-ing is an art form?  Because 
the majority of curators just ignore it or they act as in power systems, 
so are VJ creators  "forced" to ignore these-kind-of-system? The case is 
not that simple and I think we should rather squat the museums in ruins 
and not simply ignore them.

On the other hand, in terms of production and process we are speaking 
about sort of focused production and fixed method in the process. This 
is modernist process. When you are VJ-ing you are doing something exact, 
something process like, like painting, or sculpturing...in more 
Warholian, Pollockian and yeasty way and less in the contemplative or 
rhapsodic way. I saw you were all enjoying it while it was your turn to 
VJ. VJ is not gesture-like artist of the nineties, in this sense she 
doesn't belong to the tradition of Duchamp. She is definitely a new type 
of artist, an artist that is - above all - an exemplary and aristocratic 
consumer (see Groys).

The other thing what VJ-ing might be is art-craft. Like pottery design 
and majority of nowadays painting and sculpture. But I wouldn't say so. 
According to definitions of young artists a VJ is a typical artist, who 
with purpose in a careless way citates western-centered white-male 
history and belongs to the so-called flash generation.

In the nineties we were witnessing a new style in art was born, it is 
called contemporary art. In the age of our grandparents, parents and us 
looks like the fast progress is constantly present. According to this 
everything that needs to be systematized and explained in a certain way 
is having a connection with the new. So after modern architecture and 
modern art we have postmodern architecture and contemporary art.

But nineties are gone. They finished in a dramatic way. No one did 
expect such a drastic end. Internet is becoming what it is becoming. I 
do not want to talk about it because I do! believe that an open 
structure of technology will work out. (Think of a Mozzila or Linux. 
They are here for everyone. Although when I search apple in any search 
engine the first hit is never a fruit, but always a company. Anyhow, we 
are in the constant need for social utopia.)

To see contemporary art as a style enables us to make some further 
attributes and definitions  - it is a framework, a method for 
communication. Working within the fluid and shifting context and making 
new things from old with the help of context  - are two major qualities 
of the art in the nineties. Exhibitions in Kunsthalle Wien, Abracadabra 
in Tate, Documenta X, and Harald Szemaan Arsenale 2001 in Venice are 
just few examples. In a child world these exhibitions curated by 
creative curators looked like fun fair. They activated all our senses; 
they brought out many different moods. Laughing, crying, playing, 
shocking, provoking, switching the usual mindset. All the artworks were 
like different type of drugs, stressing a certain feeling in your mind 
and body. This was very much different from the previous white cubes, 
narrative and linear exhibitions where contemplation, sublime and 
passive observation were the basic modes of reception.

In the contemporary exhibition it is more a two-way communication, while 
before there was much more one-way communication. In the nineties, there 
has been a dialogue, discourse and contextual meaning, before it was 
telling something - in more or less straight and sometimes sublime manner.

But what is happening now - when we (art historians) are asking 
ourselves is VJ-ing art?
Maybe we look at the latest trend in visual arts.  Lets take a more 
recent example of Documenta11 and Venice Biennial2003. In both cases a 
certain modernistic aspect was felt and also seen. It was clear that a 
certain need to redefine and rethink modernism was present. Documenta 
and its Biearhalle was classical example of modernist approach in 
setting up - with the white cubes and one-way communication mode (this I 
mean when you put hands behind your back and walk thorough the 
exhibition). Venice biennale, especially some parts of Arsenale 
exhibition were directly talking about modernism in a trendy manner.  So 
one part was directly devoted to painting and another part was directly 
discussing modernism. At the same time in Ljubljana there was an 
exhibition that was talking about the form instead of a context in 
contemporary art. All these exhibitions dealt with the issue of 
modernism and subjects like expressing with form, autonomy, definite 
meanings and process.  One of the illustrative evidences was, that on 
none of these exhibitions no single artwork had been interactive. All 
these works were there to watch. Some of the videos were very much 
similar to video structures we can see in various VJ sets and stressing 
a process is definitely analogue to coding in software art.

What I am trying to point out is a definite lack - on those exhibitions 
I haven't seen a single new media art that would show really new forms 
and processes: code, shifty shapes, hygienic aesthetic of computer 
generated images etc. None of these exhibitions did search for answers 
in the new media art and in the new tools so widely used. They were 
looking for possible answers with partly and exclusive method. Although 
there are few exceptions, but I think the majority is repeating the same 
mistakes over and over again.

I think the revival of modernism as such is not a coincidence. As in 
society we need direct actions and fixed solutions. In the frame of 
visual history think of a book by Lev Manovich. The title of his book 
published in 2000 (what a year!) was 'The Language of New Media'". The 
association with the language of visual art, the term much discussed in 
the high modernist art, is indispensable. The book represents a total 
modernist approach - as a research it uses linear, narrative and 
describing method with the classical authorative referential background. 
It is rather formalistic and we could easily compare it to texts 
describing different style of painting, sculpture etc. i.e. like 
dripping, gesture painting, expressive painting etc. The Language of New 
Media doesn't talk about cultural, social and political impact of art, 
so many times discussed in the nineties. The book is a certain but 
straight revival of modernism - the age of fixed meanings and autonomy 
of art.
Nevertheless, Lev did it on a purpose. The Language of New Media is a 
precious observation and thus it belongs to other referential books for 
the issue of new media art.
This kind of method is still useful to see the light in experiments with 
form and function in numerous digital laboratories.

At that point we can start talking about VJ-ing. VJ-ing is modernistic 
art as the book of Lev Manovich is modernistic. All the practices 
described in that book are closer to Picasso than to Marcel Duchamp. All 
his life Picasso was dealing with the painting and form, like the new 
media artist is dealing with a specific part of a computer technology. 
Like VJ is dealing with a moving image and a loop. VJ ca be also seen as 
a one-way communication, the picture is telling us something, it plays 
with sublime and loop, with the major elements of surprise, chance and 
sometimes shock.

With the definitions about contemporary artists (of the nineties) we are 
  here witnessing a new art form that goes beyond modern and 
contemporary art.

Where beyond will s/he want to go is a question of each individual.  The 
VJ craft-man will be always happy to play in a club; for us - the party 
people; because this is her aim. But the VJ-artist or activist - who 
will play in various situations, combining different creative practices, 
using technology in a reverse and open way will definitively bring us - 
the viewers to catharsis. S/he will make us think different because we 
will experience something special and unique.

Let me finish with a paraphrased sample from art historian Ha*kan 
Nilsson: "Its a lot about interference. But in the end, it's all mostly 
about love. I guess that that is the confession. Similarity or no 
similarity, jealousy or not, no matter the intellectual approach, no 
matter the rhizomatic structure, in the world of music the cynic 
dilettante (the art critic) can sense that love is the power supreme. So 
what if the general idea is romantic? Dance is global, as is mankind. 
Nothing is impossible. I like that. There, I finally said it. Underneath 
the pirouettes of language, we all from time to time try to formulate 
that what sometimes seems so easy: "The name of the game is to feel real 
good."  It is as easy as that. You need no other excuse."


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 
License. To view a copy of this license, visit 
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-- 
dunja kukovec
skylined.org/melon
scan-line/foobar
art.cluestory.vs.present.mediathec.


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