Hypothetical Scenarios
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Suzanne Caines The Interlocutor and the End Men: Hypothetical Scenarios Goldsmiths, University of London, Phd Art 1 I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. 2 Abstract My current research seeks to dissolve the barrier between practice and theory. This has been done through the creation of hybrid identities in the form of composite characters and conceptual avatars towards the realization of what I have termed an event site. Event sites are a text/practice methodology that permits and encourages the simultaneous existence of multiple, varied and sometimes, conflicting positions. The event site allows the words included in a text to perform the job of both theory and practice. Through the action of these diverse subjectivities the site of the event is revealed as a heterogeneous procedure for thought, and the two modes of enquiry (theory and practice) are both reoccupied, suggesting that there is no distinction between theory and practice and they can co-exist in a middle space. This middle space simultaneously accommodates both equivalence and difference and allows for questions on the relationship of language to logic as a site for radical indeterminacy.1 Allowing for a reworking of the tradition notion of an artistic practice and a theoretical text to demonstrate how both ways of working compliment and are an important and valid part of research. Questions my PhD sought to explore: What is the affect of the transition between the virtual space of the screen and the written space of the page? To what extent can a television character situate the re-occupation of both practice and theory in order to assume a different relationship to both of them? In what way can the juxtaposition between theory/practice allow for a dispersed subjectivity to unfold and reconfigure accepted narrative frameworks? 3 Contents Prologue p.6. Suicide’s easy, what happened to the revolution? And That’s How I Became Michael Snow’s Walking Woman: Writing the Ribbon Introduction p.52. Trailers p.54. Chapter 1 Episode 1: True Blood p.63. The theory escaped through the footnotes into the vampires Chapter 2 Episodes 10 & 2 & 3: Deadwood, Bombay Beach & Beastie Boys p.74. Cocksucker, Feminine gestures & all my friends are magazines Chapter 3 Episode 4: Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene p.92. Four names, Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene what deserves to come into the foreground will Chapter 4 Episodes 5 & 6, The Killing & In Pursuit of Honor p.101. Super Stars don’t love they play & When The Man Comes Around Chapter 5 Episodes 7 & 8, The Hunger Games & The Sopranos p.127. The co-collaboration of the production of a super-subjective space through the occupation of a television series & Can you see the gun in the title? That’s all I can see now. Chapter 6 Episodes 9 & 11, The Walking Dead & Just a reflector-see you on the other-side Smithson…… p.141. Third Space/Middle Space Chapter 7 Episodes 12, 13, Artist Statement & This one was going to be called Game of Thrones p.148. Epilogue p.163. A Native Indian taught me Hegel-The Colonized Spirit: The new way of the world manufacturing the neoliberal subject & Trixi the Painter Coda: Dolly Parton p.170. Whatever Singularity Bibliography p.171. 4 This page was intentionally left blank 5 Prologue 2 1.1a Suicide’s easy, what happened to the revolution? What happens when people refuse to do the type of writing/practice demanded of them? For Bartleby, the title character of Herman Melville’s 1856 short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” he preferred not to copy, despite his profession as a scrivener. In making this decision, what 3 else can occur in the very stubbornness of that descent? Bartleby isolates himself in order to be spared a predetermined and externally determined fate. Yet this action of resistance and exercise of free will can enable certain kinds of space that may allow alternate subjectivities to form. This text explores the spaces characters escape from and the subsequent creation of temporalities that can lead them to form a different kind of space. If practice and theory meet in an interior third entity, can this permit different subjectivities to form, allowing for a sense of personal freedom? In Bartleby’s case, he ends up dead in his persistent refusal. But what if, along with his refusal to copy, Bartleby found a host site enabling him to become a parasite? As Serres explains in his work on posthuman thought, The Parasite, the parasite learns to breach its host, not to copy, creating a new logic through this penetration.4 The parasite thus creates an altered way of consuming and intercepting human relations, and it disrupts and challenges given forms of knowledge.5 It does this by creating an event-site, which allows theory and practice to explode. Contemporary television characters can offer another view of the parasite as they infiltrate whatever is necessary for their survival in the context of this PhD. In this gesture, the television character asks the PhD to act 6 differently and to behave in a way that was not previously seen.6 The parasite at times risks being expelled or asked to move on, but it will ask how far it needs to go as it keeps growing stronger. In this writing Michonne from the HBO television series the Walking Dead performs it perfectly.7 The parasite quietly analyses the situation, but it does not provide much to others: it creates a paralysis in order to interrupt the usual process and it acts as a catalyst, which forces the PhD to act differently8, thus allowing for more complexity.9 In doing so, what kind of regimes are invoked, challenged or disregarded?10 Does it end up being perpetually out of synch and coming back full circle? The television characters create a particular type of temporality when they begin to craft their practice in order to infiltrate the theory that they come across. They have done this by fashioning their own conceptual avatars in which to think through their subjectification alongside the theory they encounter. This becomes their practice. Ultimately, these characters’ practices can function the same as theory. The PhD text becomes the host site for these characters’ subjectivity to unfold. Bartleby ends up committing suicide because of his inability to separate out his subjectivity from capitalism11 however if he could have turned this relationship into a way of empowering his decisions, it might not have resulted in his death. The subjectivity of these television characters meets with the interlocutor to create this interior third, which can have a different function, allowing them to combine in a positive way. This can be thought of as a communal undertaking, establishing a distinct community, where they can construct it differently depending on their desire. Instead of 7 constituting a non-subjective community, this space could be viewed as a super-subjective space. There is a constant becoming (transforming) between the television characters and the interlocutor. These characters hide their secret until the very end, allowing them to control their destiny.12 If they remain ambiguous then we are unable to define who plays the role of each character, this is how the composite works. The composite character shifts and changes just like the title. Michonne removes the sword from her back, she doesn’t crumble, she moves in the most flexible ways, allowing her to keep her secret.13 In preferring not to do a type of writing demanded another line of flight can occur. In some ways the formula is not so difficult, we all have a cast of characters in order to create a composite. The co-collaboration of these television characters allows for the production of a super-subjective space that takes place through the occupation of a television series. Creating a scenario that permits a shared cognition between the characters and the interlocutor allowing for interplay of differently organized uncertain worlds. This leads to an intertwining of the interlocutor and the readymade television characters with their subjectivity in order to co-author this text. These two have been altered to give rise to this new object to form as a composite character. Theirs is no longer a human subjectivity but something more ferocious, a subjectivity that is also combined with the subjectivity of the other episodes. There is a meeting in the interior of a third space, where they can exist side by side and interact with each other allowing for a middle space. The composite characters call a subject to appear, co-creating the event site within the circumstances they encounter.14 It is this wearing away of 8 space that allows for the two to converge. The composite personalities somehow reach outside themselves and impact the subject, forcing it into this underground space where one could escape and not have to deal with an authoritative voice of theory. In doing so, this allows for the reoccupation of both theory and practice. It is this folding in of outside forces that creates this composite character allowing us to move from one space to another. Questions are re-produced through these characters, which allows for a new image to appear and to think differently regarding the relationship between theory and practice. They are acting on praxis instead of a predetermined knowledge that has already been decided for them, this is the fate that Bartleby15 refused. He did not want to be a mere copyist but rather he preferred to have a choice in his future. 16 In working through their practice these 17 characters’ decisions have not been predefined for them.