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====Chapter I==== | ====Chapter I==== | ||
=====Manipulation===== | =====Manipulation===== | ||
The use of MacGuffin, be it in cinema or in our society are addressed by Zizek, are heavily manipulated to fulfil the efficiency that is to create fluidity in cinema and drive people act upon. | The use of MacGuffin, be it in cinema or in our society are addressed by Zizek, are heavily manipulated to fulfil the efficiency that is to create fluidity in cinema and drive people act upon. For Zizek, "Symbolic efficiency is about this minimum of "reification":to become operative...<br> | ||
In the interview from Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock told that he was looking for a MacGuffin in the film, Notorious, which was a long way and finally dropped the whole idea in favor of a simpler, but concrete and visual object: a sample of uranium concealed in a wine bottle. It was in 1944, when Hitchcock produced Notorious, one year before Hiroshima. The idea was refused by the producer, he asked Hitchcock, “What is the name of goodness is that?” Hitchcock replied, “This is uranium; it’s the thing they’re going to make an atom bomb with.” And he asked, “What atom bomb?” <ref>Truffaut/ Hitchcock 1966</ref> It was not that the producer didn’t understand the uranium for making atom bomb; it is that he didn’t understand the MacGuffin to Hitchcock. Hitchcock later pointed out “if it had not been a wartime story, we could have hinged out plot on the theft of diamonds, that the gimmick was unimportant.” Here Hitchcock exposed that “all of this goes to show is that you were wrong to attach any importance to the MacGuffin. Notorious was simply the story of a man in love with a girl…”<ref>Truffaut/ Hitchcock 1966</ref> The uranium MacGuffin got out from cinematic frame, and Hitchcock learnt that that the FBI had him under surveillance for three months. I don’t totally agree with Hitchcock who simply hinged the MacGuffin to a unimportant gimmick and the real story that happened to himself can be a good testimony. Specifically, it is not just objects that are of interest, but the complex relations and narrative potentials that develop around (and because of) those objects. Viewing objects in this way gives them different mode of attention, and gives them a new kind of force.<br> | In the interview from Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock told that he was looking for a MacGuffin in the film, Notorious, which was a long way and finally dropped the whole idea in favor of a simpler, but concrete and visual object: a sample of uranium concealed in a wine bottle. It was in 1944, when Hitchcock produced Notorious, one year before Hiroshima. The idea was refused by the producer, he asked Hitchcock, “What is the name of goodness is that?” Hitchcock replied, “This is uranium; it’s the thing they’re going to make an atom bomb with.” And he asked, “What atom bomb?” <ref>Truffaut/ Hitchcock 1966</ref> It was not that the producer didn’t understand the uranium for making atom bomb; it is that he didn’t understand the MacGuffin to Hitchcock. Hitchcock later pointed out “if it had not been a wartime story, we could have hinged out plot on the theft of diamonds, that the gimmick was unimportant.” Here Hitchcock exposed that “all of this goes to show is that you were wrong to attach any importance to the MacGuffin. Notorious was simply the story of a man in love with a girl…”<ref>Truffaut/ Hitchcock 1966</ref> The uranium MacGuffin got out from cinematic frame, and Hitchcock learnt that that the FBI had him under surveillance for three months. I don’t totally agree with Hitchcock who simply hinged the MacGuffin to a unimportant gimmick and the real story that happened to himself can be a good testimony. Specifically, it is not just objects that are of interest, but the complex relations and narrative potentials that develop around (and because of) those objects. Viewing objects in this way gives them different mode of attention, and gives them a new kind of force.<br> | ||
For Zizek, he found a most efficient MacGuffin in the real world, which dives into informative circulation. For Zizek, the “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction”, fits perfectly the status of MacGuffin. According to Zizek, “As such, they (WMD) by definition cannot ever be found, and are therefore all the more dangerous... Now that none were found, we reached the last line of the story of MacGuffin: "'Well,' said President Bush in September 2003, 'then that's not a MacGuffin, is it?’” <ref>”The Iraqi MacGuffin” by Slavoj Zizek, 17-04-2003, http://www.lacan.com/iraq1.htm</ref><br> | For Zizek, he found a most efficient MacGuffin in the real world, which dives into informative circulation. For Zizek, the “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction”, fits perfectly the status of MacGuffin. According to Zizek, “As such, they (WMD) by definition cannot ever be found, and are therefore all the more dangerous... Now that none were found, we reached the last line of the story of MacGuffin: "'Well,' said President Bush in September 2003, 'then that's not a MacGuffin, is it?’” <ref>”The Iraqi MacGuffin” by Slavoj Zizek, 17-04-2003, http://www.lacan.com/iraq1.htm</ref><br> | ||
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We can understand this symbolically charged object, the key, by applying it to the letter in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Purloined Letter (1845). Exemplified by Zizek on Lacan’s seminar, there are three types of protagonists in this story. “The first which sees nothing (the King and the police); the second which sees that the first sees nothing and deludes itself as to the secrecy of what it hides (the Queen, then the Minister); the third which sees that the two first glances leave what should be hidden exposed to whomever would seize it (the Minister, and finally Dupin).” In Dial M for Murder, we can easily map them to the three types - Margo is in the first type, Tony is in the second type, and the inspector is in the third type, whereas, Mark goes from the second to the third throughout development of the story. This is exact the intersubjective community among them and the key as an object circulating among subjects is defined by Zizek as the ‘“tiny piece of real” which keeps the story in motion by finding itself “out of place”’. The very alike role of the key, as“the role of the letter is assumed by an object that circulates among the subjects and, by its very circulation, makes out of them a closed intersubjective community.” <ref>Enjoy Your Symptom!, Slavoj Zizek, 2007</ref> Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out how the very fact of exchange attests a certain structural flaw, an imbalance that pertains to the Symbolic.<br> | We can understand this symbolically charged object, the key, by applying it to the letter in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Purloined Letter (1845). Exemplified by Zizek on Lacan’s seminar, there are three types of protagonists in this story. “The first which sees nothing (the King and the police); the second which sees that the first sees nothing and deludes itself as to the secrecy of what it hides (the Queen, then the Minister); the third which sees that the two first glances leave what should be hidden exposed to whomever would seize it (the Minister, and finally Dupin).” In Dial M for Murder, we can easily map them to the three types - Margo is in the first type, Tony is in the second type, and the inspector is in the third type, whereas, Mark goes from the second to the third throughout development of the story. This is exact the intersubjective community among them and the key as an object circulating among subjects is defined by Zizek as the ‘“tiny piece of real” which keeps the story in motion by finding itself “out of place”’. The very alike role of the key, as“the role of the letter is assumed by an object that circulates among the subjects and, by its very circulation, makes out of them a closed intersubjective community.” <ref>Enjoy Your Symptom!, Slavoj Zizek, 2007</ref> Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out how the very fact of exchange attests a certain structural flaw, an imbalance that pertains to the Symbolic.<br> | ||
In the studio practice as my research background, I created a small collection of symbolically charged objects from Hitchcock’s films in a webpage: http://pzwart1.wdka.hro.nl/~yuzhen/web-guffin/guffin-1.html I accumulated those objects and extracted shots that they represented inside the films, for instance, the lighter in ''Stranger on a Train'', the tie pin in ''Frenzy'', the envelope in ''Psycho''. For me, they are like distillations of those films. I like the lighter quite a lot, which is another example of "the object of exchange" that works dramatically in the film as a symbol of the exchange of murders. Then I did moulding and reproduced it in 3d printing. At that moment the digital craft becomes a symbol in memory of | In the studio practice as my research background, I created a small collection of symbolically charged objects from Hitchcock’s films in a webpage: http://pzwart1.wdka.hro.nl/~yuzhen/web-guffin/guffin-1.html I accumulated those objects and extracted shots that they represented inside the films, for instance, the lighter in ''Stranger on a Train'', the tie pin in ''Frenzy'', the envelope in ''Psycho''. For me, they are like distillations of those films. I like the lighter quite a lot, which is another example of "the object of exchange" that works dramatically in the film as a symbol of the exchange of murders. Then I did moulding and reproduced it in 3d printing. At that moment the digital craft becomes a symbol in memory of that cinematic relationship.<br> | ||
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In the “Creative Act”, Duchamp recognises “the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” <ref> “Creative Act”, Duchamp </ref>The intention of the artist is not always communicated, thus there are good works and bad works, but they are all art. The good artwork involves audience in this creative act, thus reveals the significance to a work. This is exactly the process of circulation of meaning and it is intersubjective. The artist must enjoyed all the versions of Fountain now extant.<br> | In the “Creative Act”, Duchamp recognises “the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” <ref> “Creative Act”, Duchamp </ref>The intention of the artist is not always communicated, thus there are good works and bad works, but they are all art. The good artwork involves audience in this creative act, thus reveals the significance to a work. This is exactly the process of circulation of meaning and it is intersubjective. The artist must enjoyed all the versions of Fountain now extant.<br> | ||
In the video work from Guy Ben-Ner, ''I'd Give It To You If I Could But I Borrowed It'', the artist and his kids rummage through a museum and assemble a bicycle from several readymade sculptures, set all the readymade sculpture piece back to its original shape, which the artist reversed the process of Duchamp’s. The exchange value that Duchamp and other artists provides to these readymade, are turned back to its use value in his piece. The way to make new connection, to bring new symbolic knowledge here, is to displace them, to subvert them, but for very different purpose as Duchamp were for. In this piece, Guy Ben-Ner is dealing with the surplus value that those objects acquire as readymade in a museum. For me, it is a reactivation of antidote that Dutchamp did in his time. | |||
====Chapter III==== | ====Chapter III==== | ||
=====Duplication | =====Duplication===== | ||
Let’s take the Milk Drop Coronet as another example, it was once an iconic photograph taken in 1956 by Harold Edgerton. Whereas in 1988, there are two three-dimensional milk crowns produced based on this photograph. One was made by Jennifer Bolande which we can easily view on the artist’s website as a digital image; the other, was made independently only a month or two later, by an artist who showed with the same gallery. “On the dealer’s advice, the second was not shown, but became its own frozen moment, an art historical shadow to the Bolande version.” <ref>”Separated at Birth” by Laurie Palmer, May, 1997, http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/separated_at_birth/</ref> | Let’s take the Milk Drop Coronet as another example, it was once an iconic photograph taken in 1956 by Harold Edgerton. Whereas in 1988, there are two three-dimensional milk crowns produced based on this photograph. One was made by Jennifer Bolande which we can easily view on the artist’s website as a digital image; the other, was made independently only a month or two later, by an artist who showed with the same gallery. “On the dealer’s advice, the second was not shown, but became its own frozen moment, an art historical shadow to the Bolande version.” <ref>”Separated at Birth” by Laurie Palmer, May, 1997, http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/separated_at_birth/</ref> | ||
Here arose a very simple question asked by the writer and artist, Laurie Palmer in her article, “Separated at Birth”, “if one is good, why not two?” It was asked in 1997, and seems less valid if we ask it today, as I found already its industrial products in the form of clock, ashtray that might be understood as bad copying or art derivative products. However, I believe that Palmer’s argument is still valid, not in the art discipline only, but in a broader cultural context. She argues, “Each piece might then be read differently in relation to the nested contexts in which it was seen (exhibition venue, city, surrounding body of work…) Seen together, the two works could become each other’s context, and point of comparison.” <ref>”Separated at Birth” by Laurie Palmer, May, 1997, http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/separated_at_birth/</ref> Then what is the criteria to exclude the second piece or to maintain the value of the milk crown sculpture? It is said that Bolande made six Milk Crown herself, but it is impossible for a same piece from another artist, even the work itself is an appropriation piece. What I learnt later may bring more insight to this piece. Beginning in 1875, the British physicist Arthur Worthington started to untangle the complex process of fluid flow. By that time perfect symmetry made sense, his compendium of droplet images launched a branch of fluid dynamics that continued more than a century later. He made thousands of times of experiments that he had let splash mercury or milk droplets, some into liquid, others onto hard surfaces. Finally in 1894, he succeeded in stopping the droplet’s splash with a photograph. Those photographs revealed that “they bear out the drawings in may details, show greater irregularity than the drawings would have led one to expect.” At that very moment, the symmetrical drawings and the irregular shadow photographs clashed, one had go. Worthington named those photographs as “Objective Splash” and wrote “I have to confess that in looking over my original drawings I find records of many irregular or unsymmetrical figures, yet in compiling the history it has been inevitable that these should be rejected, if only because identical irregularities never recur. Thus the mind of the observer is filled with an ideal splash – an Auto-Splash – whose perfection may never be actually realized”.<ref>Objectivity, 2007, Lorraine Daston&Peter Galison</ref> The favour in one and the rejection in the another therefore bears in a total subjective agreement. The symmetrical “histories” has been successes, maybe even in Bolande’s piece, look how perfect it is. <br> | Here arose a very simple question asked by the writer and artist, Laurie Palmer in her article, “Separated at Birth”, “if one is good, why not two?” It was asked in 1997, and seems less valid if we ask it today, as I found already its industrial products in the form of clock, ashtray that might be understood as bad copying or art derivative products. However, I believe that Palmer’s argument is still valid, not in the art discipline only, but in a broader cultural context. She argues, “Each piece might then be read differently in relation to the nested contexts in which it was seen (exhibition venue, city, surrounding body of work…) Seen together, the two works could become each other’s context, and point of comparison.” <ref>”Separated at Birth” by Laurie Palmer, May, 1997, http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/separated_at_birth/</ref> Then what is the criteria to exclude the second piece or to maintain the value of the milk crown sculpture? It is said that Bolande made six Milk Crown herself, but it is impossible for a same piece from another artist, even the work itself is an appropriation piece. What I learnt later may bring more insight to this piece. Beginning in 1875, the British physicist Arthur Worthington started to untangle the complex process of fluid flow. By that time perfect symmetry made sense, his compendium of droplet images launched a branch of fluid dynamics that continued more than a century later. He made thousands of times of experiments that he had let splash mercury or milk droplets, some into liquid, others onto hard surfaces. Finally in 1894, he succeeded in stopping the droplet’s splash with a photograph. Those photographs revealed that “they bear out the drawings in may details, show greater irregularity than the drawings would have led one to expect.” At that very moment, the symmetrical drawings and the irregular shadow photographs clashed, one had go. Worthington named those photographs as “Objective Splash” and wrote “I have to confess that in looking over my original drawings I find records of many irregular or unsymmetrical figures, yet in compiling the history it has been inevitable that these should be rejected, if only because identical irregularities never recur. Thus the mind of the observer is filled with an ideal splash – an Auto-Splash – whose perfection may never be actually realized”.<ref>Objectivity, 2007, Lorraine Daston&Peter Galison</ref> The favour in one and the rejection in the another therefore bears in a total subjective agreement. The symmetrical “histories” has been successes, maybe even in Bolande’s piece, look how perfect it is. <br> | ||
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=====The one and the variations===== | =====The one and the variations===== | ||
Oliver Laric’s Versions (2009-2012) is a series of video artworks. The videos styled like visual essay, collage historical and contemporary multiplication of images and objects whereas the script of the voiceover is also taken from others, re-appropriated as his own. Specifically the content consists from the proliferation of cut-and-paste online memes to the shared myths of antiquity, all high and | Oliver Laric’s Versions (2009-2012) is a series of video artworks. The videos styled like visual essay, collage historical and contemporary multiplication of images and objects whereas the script of the voiceover is also taken from others, re-appropriated as his own. Specifically the content consists from the proliferation of cut-and-paste online memes to the shared myths of antiquity, all high culture and popular culture, as diverse as "the Photoshopping of a publicity photo of an Iranian missile launch, the reuse of character animations by Disney and Warner Bros., and the basis of classical statuary in common iconographies and a library of stock poses." For me, his work is a testimony of the multi-worlds that we are living in. The moment that we encounter with the duplication, the multiplicity, the reference to fact collapsed and the situation we are dealing with is indeed mediated.<br> | ||
The reproduction, displacement, and the following interpretation and reinterpretation co-exist and in a way imply more possibilities that are not visible. | |||
====Chapter IV==== | ====Chapter IV==== | ||