University of Cincinnati
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in: It is entitled: This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ Constructive Alienation and Terror: An Analysis of Martha Rosler’s A Simple Case for Torture (or How to Sleep at Night) (1983), Harun Farocki’s Inextinguishable Fire (1969), and Eye/Machines (2001-3) A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History Committee Members: Dr. Kimberly Paice (chair) Prof. Charles Woodman Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller May 2005 By: Kristin Marie Brockman B.A. May 2002, University of Dayton ABSTRACT In my thesis, I examine Martha Rosler’s A Simple Case for Torture (Or How to Sleep at Night) (1983) and Harun Farocki’s Inextinguishable Fire (1969) and Eye/Machine I, II, and III (2001-3). These works investigate the role of distancing in media practices, and splay out televisual and other technologies that are used to represent war. Both Rosler and Farocki work to retrieve the distance that the spectacle creates between viewers and violence. Additionally, they intend to activate history through the systemic collection and re-presentation of information. As artist-archivists, Rosler and Farocki incite viewers to become active participants rather than passive consumers of history. CONTENTS Acknowledgements 2 Introduction 3 Chapter 1 Torture (or how to sleep at night) 12 Chapter 2 Controlling Observation 23 Conclusion 40 Appendix A Transcripts of Harun Farocki’s Eye/Machine I, II, and III videos 49 Appendix B A Partial Transcript of Harun Farocki’s Inextinguishable Fire 55 Appendix C A Partial Transcript of Jill Godmilow’s What Farocki Taught 57 Bibliography 59 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks are due first to Dr. Kim Paice, who has guided, challenged, inspired, and supported me throughout this process. I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Charles Woodman, without whose advice and expertise I would be lost. Thanks also to Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller for many helpful discussions and comments. I owe thanks to my friends, especially Ben, whose knowledge, support, and kindness is limitless. Finally, thanks to my dear family, especially my mother, Susan and my brother, Mikey. 2 Introduction: Constructive Alienation and Terror An immeasurably vast array of images floods contemporary society every day. Visual stimulation is inseparable from information, as well as from entertainment. From these basic premises, I developed this thesis. Herein, I examine Martha Rosler’s (American, b. 1942) video A Simple Case for Torture (Or How to Sleep at Night) (1983), and Harun Farocki’s (German, b. 1944) film Inextinguishable Fire (1969) as well as his videos Eye/Machine I, II, and III (2001-3). In my thesis, I examine Martha Rosler’s A Simple Case for Torture (Or How to Sleep at Night) (1983) and Harun Farocki’s Inextinguishable Fire (1969) and Eye/Machine I, II, and III (2001-3). These works investigate the role of distancing in media practices, and splay out televisual and other technologies that are used to represent war. Both Rosler and Farocki work to retrieve the distance that the spectacle creates between viewers and violence. Their works confront mainstream media’s relationship to terrorism and torture. Unlike work of their contemporaries, Rosler’s and Farocki’s video not only engage viewers in a dialogue of the media’s role in public understanding, but also seek to reactivate and redefine what constitutes knowledge and history. The connection between actual events and the representations that describe them are always in question. In her discussion of performance art and its political valences, art historian Kathy O’Dell observed: By 1970, it had become clear in the context of the Vietnam War that there was a growing discrepancy between what was fact and what was being represented as fact by individuals in positions of power. As people followed the war from home (on television or in the newspaper), they became aware that the body counts were being inflated and that atrocities such as the My Lai massacre were common.[1] The gap between ‘what 1 On March 16, 1968 United States Charlie Company 11th Brigade soldiers attacked the South Vietnamese village of Mỹ Lai. Several hundred Vietnamese civilians were killed-- men, women, children, 3 was said’ by those in power and ‘what was meant’ grew wider and wider. This erosion of faith in the allegedly consensual relationship between the citizen and the state in the early 1970s was tied to both the disaffection with the ongoing Vietnam War and the changes taking place in contract law. In this sense, any individual’s repudiation of the war may be seen as a response to political leaders’ exploitation of the century–old pattern in contract law of privileging what is said (the signifier) over what is meant (the referent) in such a way that the latter simply disappears as it is merged ideologically with the former.2 As such, the boundary that separated actual events and fiction became increasingly contestable, possibly even nonexistent. Nevertheless, we persist in the endeavor of recovering, conserving, and classifying documents to create a history punctuated by images. Both Rosler and Farocki attempt to activate this history through the systemic collection and re-presentation of information. In his article “An Archival Impulse,” Hal Foster explains that contemporary archival art: …Not only draws on informal archives but produces them as well, and does so in a way that underscores the nature of all archival materials as found yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet private. Further, it often arranges these materials according to a quasi-archival logic, and presents them in a quasi-archival architecture, a complex of texts and objects.3 Acting as artist-archivists, Rosler and Farocki invite viewers to become active participants rather than passive consumers of history. Their work involves connecting seemingly fragmented bits of information to provide vehicles of communication and a means of restructuring symbolic law. I contend that Rosler’s and Farocki’s acts of making connections between ideas and images and babies. Photographs of the events that were later published in Life Magazine December 5, 1969 provoked public outrage, and helped fuel the anti-war movement in the United States. 2 Kathy O’Dell, Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 11. 3 Hal Foster, “An Archival Impulse,” October Vol. 110 (2004): 4. 4 are motivated by the failure of mainstream media to allow viewers to internalize information. As a result, their work makes viewers aware of the failure of cultural memory. In acting as artist-archivists, Rosler and Farocki work against what Foster calls “archival reason.” Archival art might also be bound up, ambiguously, even deconstructively, with an “archive reason” at large, that is, with a “society of control” in which our past actions are archived (medical records, border crossings, political involvement…) so that our present activities can be surveilled and our future behaviors predicted. This networked world does appear both disconnected and connected--a paradoxical appearance that archival art sometimes seems to mimic (Hirschhorn displays can resemble mock World Wide Webs of information),[4] which might also bear on its paranoia vis-à-vis an order that seems both incoherent and systemic in its power.5 In their work both Rosler and Farocki examine how collecting images has become a weapon for culture workers in the era of terrorism. These artists are collectors activating the archive.6 Since the early 1970s, Rosler has been a revolutionary figure in video, performance, photography, criticism, and theory. To heighten social engagement, she has used diverse methods of distributing her art, for example, she has created photographs, postcards, garage sales, and videos. Accessibility and the role of viewers are of paramount concern. Rosler’s work deals with issues of contemporary life and politics: feminism, war, homelessness, and terrorism, to name a few. Through direct 4 Thomas Hirschhorn’s (Swiss, b. 1957) installations incorporate entire rooms and are composed of material such as duct tape, cardboard, and aluminum foil. His installations invite viewers to spend time with his art, investigating the materials and narratives they contain. 5 Ibid., 22. 6 Ibid. See also, Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1972), 126-131. 5 confrontation, Rosler engages viewers in a dialogue and challenges them to rethink their personal, social, and political boundaries. Her work disrupts the mythologies of everyday life by revealing the complex systems that orchestrate these myths. Her videos often subvert the ritual qualities of the medium to prompt critical responses. In Chapter I: Torture (or how to sleep at night) I examine Rosler’s video A Simple Case for Torture (or How to Sleep at Night) in depth, demonstrating how it performs an institutional critique of mainstream media. I address the context and content of the video, looking to Michel Foucault’s discussions of the construction of history, as well as Guy Debord’s notion of the spectacle, to inform my reading of Rosler’s analysis of corporate media. A Simple Case for Torture centers on a critique of philosopher Michael Levin’s essay “A Simple Case for Torture.”7 Through a combination of narration and the presentation of print articles and images, Rosler traces how individuals are subordinate to the state through censorship and terrorism. The video cites a range of articles, and the credits include an extensive bibliography forming the backdrop for Rosler’s work and critique.