DOI Heft:
Nr. 1
DOI Artikel:Rattray, Michael: Something about a face: itinerant post-spectacle practices and the work of Graham Landin
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31178#0086
The images presented in the dgures attest that
the city and its operational public sphere(s) must be
visualized for what they are, an area where a public
economy intermingles and créâtes communities.
While Marx highlighted the alienation inherent to
the capitalist systém, works such as these re-activate
the systém and speak to the possibility of our urban
environments, dehned by a market economy as inclu-
sive and participatory, so long as there is the ability
to access without exclusionary measures dehned
through race, dass, gender, or sexual preference, or
what Lefebvre calls the systemic hierarchy. It must be
expressly stated that this possibility is to be limited
by exchange, créative exchange, and not throttled
by monopolisdc Controls based within the totalizing
concept of domineering super-individual/corpora-
tions, as is currently evidenced by contemporary
corporate culture.
Thus, Landin is représentative of a new consor-
tium of ardsts that validate and bring forth the value
of a market economy systém of exchange where
individual expression supersedes large scale branding.
(konformity and totalization are as familiar as they are
the end goal of the society of the spectacle, but once
this concept is understood and individual agency is
given its due, something changes. In a contempo-
rary economic and political systém obsessed with
branding, these acts of créative terrorism explode
the terror of the monopolistic brand, sanctioned by
those private political processes that publicly exhibit
monuments of an imagined and homogenous-self,
or the mirror image of the commodity driven spec-
tacle. They are post-spectacle, because they present
an active means of spectacle manipulation that can
be incorporated by any agent or spectator. The
pièces encourage active and posidve forms of illegal
participation.
In order to understand how the function of a
privatized public abstract space can be visualized
and subverted, Lefebvre comments three formants
that imply one another while concealing one another
must be interrogated. These formants are dehned as
and The geometrie formant
is understood as a homogeneous Euclidean space
that is the space of reference, or the absolute space.
^ LEFEBVRE 1991 (see in note 36), pp. 285-287.
Through the use of Euclidean space, three-dimen-
sional space is reduced to two-dimensions, resulting
in a Hattened topographical map, or city plan. The
optical formant encompasses a métonymie spectacu-
larization, where the visual gains precedence over
the other senses in a combination with the word.
The last formant is the phallic, characterized by the
brutality of systemic power, what Lefebvre calls the
means of constraintA
The pièces expose abstract space in a combina-
tion that can be understood through Lefebvre's
breakdown of the three formants. Firstly, the pièces
break through representational Euclidean space by
forcing an engagement that dehes their function.
Each face, as it is enacted and completed by the
architectural site, both reduces and expands how
space is seen and experienced. An invocation of a
two-dimensional Hattening, such as the représenta-
tion of the city in its planning stages, occurs, but
at the same time the images appear to pop out of
their constraints, becoming animate in the process.
In addition, because the space of reference is both
reduced and expanded, its absoluteness as a func-
tional space is brought under quesdon. In combina-
tion with the literal métonymie spectacularization of
the mundane or unseen, each piece makes the space
something new; it replaces its function with a créative
endeavor that can be manipulated and contributed
to by anyone, if they choose to do so. The nodon
of choice and contribudon in altering the absolute
space of the city then invokes the violent brutality
of systemic power, or the phallic. By encouraging
the spectator to become a participant, at any level,
be it removal or alteration, the agent is momentarily
forced to individually quesdon how they should view
the legalides and violence inherent to public space. In
tandem, the three formants together implicitly force
a negotiation with the spectator that interrogates
who the space is for, what it can do, and how it can
be changed or manipulated to serve the most perd-
nent funedon in that moment. The space becomes a
place of creadvity and imaginadon, politicized even
where anthropomorphic variables become visual-
ized as potentials of execution anywhere within our
public sphere(s).
An imbedded code of violence inherent to the
concept of public space is also subverted yet high-
lighted within the work. W J. T. Mitchell disdnguishes
80
the city and its operational public sphere(s) must be
visualized for what they are, an area where a public
economy intermingles and créâtes communities.
While Marx highlighted the alienation inherent to
the capitalist systém, works such as these re-activate
the systém and speak to the possibility of our urban
environments, dehned by a market economy as inclu-
sive and participatory, so long as there is the ability
to access without exclusionary measures dehned
through race, dass, gender, or sexual preference, or
what Lefebvre calls the systemic hierarchy. It must be
expressly stated that this possibility is to be limited
by exchange, créative exchange, and not throttled
by monopolisdc Controls based within the totalizing
concept of domineering super-individual/corpora-
tions, as is currently evidenced by contemporary
corporate culture.
Thus, Landin is représentative of a new consor-
tium of ardsts that validate and bring forth the value
of a market economy systém of exchange where
individual expression supersedes large scale branding.
(konformity and totalization are as familiar as they are
the end goal of the society of the spectacle, but once
this concept is understood and individual agency is
given its due, something changes. In a contempo-
rary economic and political systém obsessed with
branding, these acts of créative terrorism explode
the terror of the monopolistic brand, sanctioned by
those private political processes that publicly exhibit
monuments of an imagined and homogenous-self,
or the mirror image of the commodity driven spec-
tacle. They are post-spectacle, because they present
an active means of spectacle manipulation that can
be incorporated by any agent or spectator. The
pièces encourage active and posidve forms of illegal
participation.
In order to understand how the function of a
privatized public abstract space can be visualized
and subverted, Lefebvre comments three formants
that imply one another while concealing one another
must be interrogated. These formants are dehned as
and The geometrie formant
is understood as a homogeneous Euclidean space
that is the space of reference, or the absolute space.
^ LEFEBVRE 1991 (see in note 36), pp. 285-287.
Through the use of Euclidean space, three-dimen-
sional space is reduced to two-dimensions, resulting
in a Hattened topographical map, or city plan. The
optical formant encompasses a métonymie spectacu-
larization, where the visual gains precedence over
the other senses in a combination with the word.
The last formant is the phallic, characterized by the
brutality of systemic power, what Lefebvre calls the
means of constraintA
The pièces expose abstract space in a combina-
tion that can be understood through Lefebvre's
breakdown of the three formants. Firstly, the pièces
break through representational Euclidean space by
forcing an engagement that dehes their function.
Each face, as it is enacted and completed by the
architectural site, both reduces and expands how
space is seen and experienced. An invocation of a
two-dimensional Hattening, such as the représenta-
tion of the city in its planning stages, occurs, but
at the same time the images appear to pop out of
their constraints, becoming animate in the process.
In addition, because the space of reference is both
reduced and expanded, its absoluteness as a func-
tional space is brought under quesdon. In combina-
tion with the literal métonymie spectacularization of
the mundane or unseen, each piece makes the space
something new; it replaces its function with a créative
endeavor that can be manipulated and contributed
to by anyone, if they choose to do so. The nodon
of choice and contribudon in altering the absolute
space of the city then invokes the violent brutality
of systemic power, or the phallic. By encouraging
the spectator to become a participant, at any level,
be it removal or alteration, the agent is momentarily
forced to individually quesdon how they should view
the legalides and violence inherent to public space. In
tandem, the three formants together implicitly force
a negotiation with the spectator that interrogates
who the space is for, what it can do, and how it can
be changed or manipulated to serve the most perd-
nent funedon in that moment. The space becomes a
place of creadvity and imaginadon, politicized even
where anthropomorphic variables become visual-
ized as potentials of execution anywhere within our
public sphere(s).
An imbedded code of violence inherent to the
concept of public space is also subverted yet high-
lighted within the work. W J. T. Mitchell disdnguishes
80