Fred Forest. For an Aesthetics of Communication
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In focussing thought onto communication and systems of exchange, the research outlined here as an extension of Sociological Art suggests a basis on which a theory has yet to be founded. Exploring and activating the universe of Communication media means essentially constructing the penomenology of the imaginary simultaneously. This was the principal theme of the action known as " The Stock-Exchange of the Imaginary - a Stock-Exchange of New Items ", which took place at the Georges Pompidou Centre in 1982, and of the action known as " Düsseldorf - Presse - Agentur (imaginär incl.) " which I am currently preparing. It must be admitted once and for all that the history and genesis of the configurations of the imaginary are indelibly engraved int the " technologies " upon which our perception is utterly dependant - and thus today engraved in the " technologies " of communication. As we have already pointed out, the medium is never neutral. Gregory Bateson writes, " The lions in Trafalgar square could have been eagles or bulldogs and still have carried the same (or similar) messages about empire and about the cultural premises of nineteenth century England. And yet, how different might their message have been had they been made of wood! ". (16) The artist's message is not only subordinated to the medium which expresses it, but it also depends on the system of exchange or social medium in which it circulates. This is why our actions strive to make messages circulate not only throughout the " art system ", but also, by introducing them into all usable communication channels, into as many systems of social communication as possible... and in seeking the points of intersection where, through telescoping, the systems meet to create " sense effects ".
Speaking at the Paris Museum of Modern Art in 1982, Professor Mario Costa of the University of Salerno, Italy said, " To be confronted with a " work of art " in the organisation of meaning which is produced by dealers, museums, collectors, is thus first and foremost to be confronted by the system of exchange and meaning which upholds it. By " system of meaning " must also be understood all the reflexive systems in which the existence of each element is justified and legitimised. It is for this reason that once the constituent and dissolving functions carried out ty the media and by the art system in its relationship to the " artistic message " have been recognised, the artit's interest becomes completely detached from the messages themselves, in order to focus on the techniques and social mechanisms which produce them. This means that instead of continuing to dwell on " information " and " meaning " as artistic research has done, or has thought to do up until the present, the artist is now in position to be able to thematise, invest and represent both information-free communication and systems of meaning without " signification ". The problem which is here being examined not only concerns artistic production but the entire universe of communication as well as the whole system of exchanges. Everything, in fact, can be subjected to investigation and consideration of an aesthetic nature: the relevant area for aesthetic research from now on must be considerably enlarged and extended to technological as well as social media. The Sociological Art Collective as well as certain exponents of conceptual art, if not of the Post-Avant-Garde, have to a certain extent already worked on the data relative to communication and systems ". (17)
After the roles of activisation and consciousness-raising have always been the main line of Sociological Art, it seems to me that without abandoning social praxis, art should now address itself more firmly to the problems of Communication, and attempt to bring out the formal and functional aspects which are inherent to it.