Fred Forest. For an Aesthetics of Communication
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Games are activities which are performed freely, with no obligations and for pleasure. As such, they are one of the most fundamental components in the widest sense of the word, of all artistic events. This certainly does not mean that art is a gratuitous operation with no determined objectives. It is not merely escapist entertainment which tends towards fiction.
Art maintains close links with reality, and seeks to use its influence to modify the perception of it. From the field of possible situations, games as simulation models anticipate real ones throug successive investigations. They develop strategies of action. They help to redefine social relationship and behaviour, by reproducing them on the level of game playing. They modify them, and suggest alternative versions of them. In this guise, art operates directly on social reality. It posits a simulated representation of this reality, the imperfections of which show up through its juxtaposition with the simulation. Culture is no longer satisfied with being uniquely a leisure activity: it now wants to assert itself as a fighting weapon.
According to McLuhan, " Any game, like any medium of information, is an extension of the individual or the group. Its effect on the group or individual is a reconfiguring of the parts of the group or individual thar are not so extended. A work of art has no existence of function apart from its effect on human observers. And art, like games or popular arts, and like media of communication, has the power to impose its own assumptions by setting the human community into new relationships and posture. Art, like games, is a translator or experieuce. What we have already felt or seen in one situation we are given in a new kind of material. " (4)
The conception, organisation, execution and very goal of our artistic actions all attempt, by using the appropriate methodology, to bring fictitious situations and real facts in contact with each other. It is a a potential " other reality " that the fiction is presented to the real world, a reality which is enriched through the shared experience of contact between artist and spectator. Games, dreams and the imaginary are brought into the dimension of lived experience. Such a conception of art clashes completely with traditional codes, and makes its perception problematic. In the field of the plastic arts, the works of centuries past generally followed the rules in order to produce a certain " verisimilitude ", and it was this verisimilitude which was the main criterion on which judgment was based. Every truly innovatory act necessarily involves a break from established order. Fundamental artistic innovations must always draw on the repertoire of established knowledge, but are nonetheless enriched by each artist's creativity. The brutal irruption of new idioms into the cosy world of art inevitably entails the natural phenomenon of bewilderment on the part of the general public, and so demands a period of assimilation. In the current broadening of the artistic spectrum to encompass disciplines belonging to the social sciences, personal expression is likely to become the reflection of a more general problem and all its implications, be they political, social, psychological or philosophical. The integration of the social sciences into the the context of the plastic arts is accompanied by a diversification on the level of techniques and borrowings from literary genres (narrative painting), as from the theatre (happenings), the cinema (video apart), etc. McLuhan writes: " As our proliferating new technologies have created a whole series of new environments, men have become aware of the arts as " anti-environments " or " counter-environments " that provide us with the means of perceiving the environment itself. (...) Art as anti-environment becomes more than ever a means of training perception and judgment ". (5)
For a very long time, discourse on art consisted essentially of discussions about numbers of angels on the head of a pin. Things are starting to change. Through his work, the artist is today starting to understand that " power " is linked to every human action. Attempting to deny this, in the name of some naïve idealism, is tantamount to denying reality. People are surrounded by constraints, and enjoy certain liberties. The relationship between people is always conditioned by the power game which is constantly played between them. There is no reason to flinch at recognising it. Power can be seen to be operating at all levels of human relations. It is the attribute of every social performer. Everyone exercises power, at the same time as submitting to it. Each one of us has been forced to " reconcile " himself with his environment since earliest childhood. Each one of us has found it necessary to elaborate a behavioural strategy, whether consciously or unconsiously, inside the system in which he operates. Individual and collective change requires overthrowing the rules of this particular game. Each one of us has to learn to challenge the constraints and liberties which constitute his " field of action ". It is precisely because it took account of these facts that Sociological Art thought of itself as an " art of action ". Even in the most rigidly controlled social systems, there is always a margin of manoeuvrability into which either an individual or a minority can manage to slip. Wherein lies hope. In a trial of strength, the weakest is never totally defenseless. He always has the means of turning the situation to his advantage if he can find the exact spot at which to apply the lever. The ideas of " game " and " strategy " are closely linked to the social behaviour. Its limits are, of course, those of opposing authority, but also those of our own imagination which requires exercising, stretching and sharpening. In turn, the artist becomes a " social operative ", he becomes a social performeer. The scaling down and the provocation of power, and its recuperation as a form of play, belong to the field of art. The responsible artist knows this power as his, and confronts the surrounding world with it.