London Look: Views on Political Aesthetics

On 4 June a PGR trip was arranged into London to visit two very different exhibitions, ‘Defining Beauty’ (British Museum) and ‘The Production Line of Happiness’ (Whitechapel Gallery) followed by a professorial lecture held at Goldsmiths University. The following gives a brief account of the exhibitions, along with thoughts and comments from those attending the trip. 

The day began with a visit to the British Museum to see the ‘Defining Beauty‘ exhibition. The focus was on the representation of the human body in ancient Greek art (and Roman remodelling). While Egyptian art had sought to cover the body, the Greek aesthetic was to represent the naked human body as both as an object of beauty and a bearer of meaning. At the opening of the show was a marble statue of a naked Aphrodite crouching as she bathes (a Roman copy of a Greek original, 2nd century AD). The statute is placed such that you arrive to see her from behind, with her finger-tips just hovering over one shoulder as if beckoning, making for a somewhat an erotic image. The wall text at the opening also reminds of the relationship made in the ancient Greek period between the human body and demos or democracy. This opening scene immediately set a theme for the day of the political aesthetic.

After the British Museum, we moved onto the Whitechapel Gallery for Christopher Williams’ ‘The Production Line of Happiness‘. The contrast couldn’t have felt much greater. In the mould of the anti-aesthetic, this exhibition while ostensibly a show of photography, is very deliberately staged to reveal its own sense of display. Elements of the previous exhibition held in the same space are visible, walls are brought in from other exhibitions, and elements of the work shown are placed in the foyer as as well as the designated gallery spaces. All in all the exhibition offers a defamiliarisation of curatorial display. However, while deconstructing the gallery setting, it is arguably an environment that is still inward looking – a critique of and for the few, not the many – unlike the human forms that we encountered in the British Museum (though it ought to be noted, the The Whitechapel exhibition was free entry, while the British Museum charged a high premium for an exhibition that was largely put together based on the Nation’s own collection!).

After visiting these two exhibitions, we ended the day at Goldsmiths to hear a public, professorial lecture given by Prof. Sean Cubitt, in the Media and Communications department. His lecture, with the title of ‘Political Aesthetics: Becoming Human’, began by suggesting a need to shift from the typical ‘political’ image (such as we might associated with the Obama ‘Hope’ poster of his 2008 election campaign). Instead, Cubitt placed attention upon a satellite image, looking out to the planet Saturn. This, Cubitt argued, was a deeply political image. We were told, for example, how the fuel powering this device orbiting the earth to bring us the image came from the uranium mines on aboriginal lands in Australia. As a form of cognitive mapping, whereby we need to reestablish an understanding of how we make meaning (and how all meaning is mediated) Cubitt considered not want that internet does as such, but rather what is made of. How it is powered, how it is transmitted, how it is discarded. In all cases, the contents is borne of political-economic condition that precedes it. In effect, the traditional questions of aesthetics about truth, beauty and the good (as we encountered in the British Museum exhibition, and then challenged at the Whitechapel) were recast in Cubitt’s talk to consider a new materialist and ecological take on both politics and aesthetics. We were asked to consider a new ‘human’, or at least a new set of rights for society that incorporations not just the human body, but the interacting ‘body’ of computers and land.

Thoughts & Commentaries

Jane Birkin: Through a survey of his own work, Christopher Williams references the multiplicity of photographies that can be found across a variety of milieus; this exhibition is not about the status of the single image, but the production and deployment of many. Some pictures have the look of those used in advertising, mainstream publications or commercial catalogues; there are indexically captioned plant typologies; and visually perplexing images that reject categorisation. There are layers and back-stories to these images that we are consistently and purposefully not told. A small document displayed on the upper floor playfully suggests that these images have been found and purchased as a ‘job lot’, bringing us forward to the shifting, authorless, decontextualized state of the photographic image today.

Williams presents us with the techniques of photographic production. An immaculate picture of the technical apparatus itself confronts us at the start: finger on shutter, it is a fitting introduction to a display of perfectly rendered images. But there are imperfections within the pictures, including the noticeable inclusion of photographic equipment, that would normally be lost in cropping or other post-production methods: thus we are not looking at the image itself but rather at its making. In a further technological referencing, the green colour that runs through the exhibition is that of the Fuji film carton. This same green dominates the exhibition catalogue, a beautifully constructed publication that contains none of the images from the exhibition. Why would it when there are important discussions that can be had around this work without its re-production?

In any case the catalogue could never replicate the affect of the installation, and it is this installation that is most immediately striking: the photographs are hung somewhat low on the wall, with the detritus of the previous exhibition becoming an integral part of the exhibition concept. The marks and imperfections on the walls, together with the swathes of Fuji green, interrupt the flow of the already disjointed collection of works and parallel the flaws in the images themselves. The installation presents as much of a deconstructed and voyeuristic view of exhibition making as it does of photographic production.

*

Elham Soleimani: Visiting the exhibition ‘Defining Beauty’ provided me with a space to reflect on my own research and creative practice and, as my work mainly concerns the human body (in particular, the female figure), sexuality and veiling/covering, I believe that all these topics have been greatly explored through ancient Greek art. The human body, specifically its representation and beauty, has indeed received a great deal of attention from all civilizations throughout different eras, however, ancient Greek art explored the representation of the human body not only as an object, but also as a source of meanings. For instance, in one Assyrian scene titled ‘A Chronicle of Cruelty’, nakedness symbolizes failure and dishonor and the sculptures of women’s bodies are covered to represent their modesty and their desire to maintain their reputation.

Despite the wonderful masterpieces in this exhibition, one of the most fascinating features was a booklet with tactile images along with braille text, designed for visually impaired “viewers”. I sat there and simply touched the images. I tried to understand the lines and where they were trying to direct me. In fact, these lines introduced me to a new way of understanding and creating images that I am eager to experiment with, as my own creative practice concentrates on graphic illustration, the effect of lines and the emotions and understanding that one might achieve through them.

*

Cheng-Chu Weng:  The first stop: to view the classical sculptures at the British Museum. Practicing, the Chinese idiom ‘讀萬卷書，行萬里路’ , means ‘in order to attain wisdom, it is not enough merely to read books, you must be well travelled as well’. I have been researching the classical body in art through reading, yet inevitably the visit really helped increased my knowledge. It was magnificent that my own body was able to be around the sculptures, they seem so much more alive than photographs and video. From this point of view did there is a link with Professor Sean Cubitt’s lecture: Becoming human-Political aesthetics, given at Goldsmiths University. Two keywords in my research are pixel and body. At the beginning of the lecture Cubitt offered a critical view of the structure of image in hyper-reality, noting how pixels presented in grids of four via the ubiquitous CCD chip. He believes moderns are dominated by pixel and CCD chip. The images produced by high technology are political, such as an image of a faraway planet in the solar system. The reason that images from science or geology can be political, particularly today, is that we economically we rely on data. What we see or believe is through photography and computer screens, which construct data. This may seem to lack the aesthetic of more obvious political images, yet they are able to ‘enclose’ knowledge; again ‘in order to attain wisdom, it is not enough merely to read books; you must be well travelled as well’. Following Cubitt’s explanation of the human body, which could be analysis three types of the body, flesh (physical body), consuming/ labor body and body as the embodiment with technology, they are in the form of the political. Compare this with the classical body, engaged with myth and human desire; although through their display at the British Museum they become a political body as well. In the end, Cubitt left a fundamental, but challenging question: How should we be human?

*

Oliver Peterson Gilbert: Sean Cubitt’s inaugural lecture, drawing on material archaeologies and the inherent politics of objects, was as alarming as it was insightful. His deconstruction of the eco-political implications of technological matter, from space telescopes to the icons on your computer, demonstrated our total complicity in the destruction of the planet. In particular, Cubitt’s use of Marx’s Grundrisse to reflect upon contemporary post-industrial cognitive-cultural economies and the plight of the digital factory worker was thought provoking and showed the continued relevance of this text in the 21^st century.  Despite the ominous nature of his lecture, Cubitt used this public platform as a call-to-arms: presenting the case for a reclassification of the political to include both non-human and human actors, a radical vision which goes someway towards reforming the mankind’s political relationship with the planet.

*

Sarvenaz Sohrabi: Although I have read in the past about the art of ancient Greece, the opportunity to look at the works shown at the British Museum while currently engaged in my own practice-based research brought to me new understanding of the works. Artworks, regardless of their aesthetic effects, are carrying messages in different fields and at different time of human thought. Hence they are a type of intermediate cognition of the past and present. Significantly, however, although about half of the human population are women, art history is frequently masculine, with women in second place. The lesser role of women in Greek art is visible. Most of sculptures show  powerful men with strong bodies. Even romantic stories on urns were designed to illustrate the love story of heroes. Visiting the exhibition made me think again about the gender-bias of gods and religions in different art periods.