AESTHETICS PIETRO CONTE UNFRAMING INTERNATIONAL MIMESIS Pietro Conte UNFRAMING AESTHETICS MIMESIS INTERNATIONAL © 2020 – Mimesis International (Milano – Udine) www.mimesisinternational.com e-mail: info@mimesisinternational.com Book series: Aesthetics, n. 8 Isbn: 9788869772221 © MIM Edizioni Srl P.I. C.F. 02419370305 Cover image: John Chervinsky, Bananas in Bowl with Painting on Table, 2010, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Courtesy Kirsten Chervinsky TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 11 I. The Frame: At the Margins of Representation 1. 2. 3. 4. A Frame for Dubai Gaze-Orienting Devices Islands of Unreality The Presentation of Representation 21 31 37 46 II. Inside and Outside the Frame: Hyperrealism and Immersion 1. 2. 3. 4. Like a Drawbridge Ladies and Guards Framing, Reframing Immersive Environments 53 62 77 95 III. Frameless: The Abstract Sublime 1. Ars Est Ostentare Artem 2. Pictures vs Paintings 3. Vir Heroicus Sublimis 115 122 132 References 153 Index 165 INTRODUCTION As a lovely frame adds to a painting, Even though it is from a master’s brush, An indefinable strangeness and charm By isolating it from vast nature… Charles Baudelaire, A Phantom We live surrounded by frames. Door frames, window frames; painting, photography, poster, billboard frames; television and cinema screen frames; desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile phone frames. Frames are so ubiquitous that we barely notice them. And yet, although we are all most familiar with every kind of framing devices, as soon as we try to characterise them more precisely, we find ourselves in a quandary. In philosophy, and more specifically in aesthetics, many attempts have been made to answer the Socratic ti esti question by providing an exhaustive, all-embracing description of the “true essence” of frames. However, they have often led not only to many contradictory definitions, but also, even worse, to normative claims about what a “good” frame should or ought to look like. Instead of trying to detail what frames are, this book focuses on what they do. Its purpose is not to sketch out an ontology or a morphology of “the” frame, since it concentrates on frames qua agents, not qua objects. The assumption is that frames possess agency, meaning that they have a peculiar, framespecific impact upon the beholder. Thus, the emphasis is on the processes and procedures of framing rather than on frames as concrete objects. 12 Unframing Aesthetics What does the act of framing amount to? What are its salient features? And how to distinguish it from other seemingly analogous operations? These questions are addressed in the first chapter, which starts from the almost self-evident truth that to consider something worth framing means to regard it as worth protecting and treasuring because of its unique affective power. To frame something is to draw attention to its specialness and to establish a clear-cut demarcation line between the usual and the unusual, the ordinary and the extraordinary. By separating a given object from its surroundings, the gesture of framing isolates it and makes it iconic, in the etymological sense of the word: it turns it into an eikon, it makes it an image. This “iconising” quality is what directly and inextricably links frames to aesthetics, meant as both the science of art and the theory of perception. Traditionally, scholars have focused on the role of frames in relation to artworks, and especially to paintings. No wonder then that, when thinking of frames, the first things that come to mind are picture frames. To frame is to symbolise the work of art as a self-contained and self-sufficient aesthetic whole, thus strengthening the double function of its boundaries: exercising indifference towards (and defence against) the exterior while at the same time unifying the interior. However, this also applies, far more broadly, to visual objects that are not works of art. Indeed, frames can even remain empty, circumscribing nothing but a void. In this case, they seem capable of turning whatever happens to enter their space – no matter what it is – into an image. To be more precise: they invite viewers to look at the framed object as something of major symbolic importance that not only requires special attention but also demands to be apprehended in a particular manner, namely, through a specific mode of consciousness. This is crucial to understanding the power of framing. Aesthetically, frames do not merely define the reality (or rather, as we shall see, the quasi-reality) status of the visual objects enclosed within them as distinguished from the ordinary objects of daily life. They also ask viewers to consider the framed object not as a part of the world in which they live and act, but as a statement about that world – as a representation carrying symbolic meaning. From both a physical and a phenomenological point of view, frames act Introduction 13 as gaze-directing devices: on the one hand, they “catch the eye” of the beholder and call attention to the enclosed objects; on the other hand, they demand a proper modalisation of the gaze. By marking a threshold between actual reality and the “unreality” of representation, the frame serves as a border at which our gaze is adjusted, reorganised, and reprogrammed. It causes estrangement, acting as a disorientation zone; but at the same time it provides a new orientation in that it instructs the observer on how to look at the framed object in order to apprehend it properly. This means that, while isolating the object from all that surrounds it and, therefore, from the viewer as well, the frame also helps this very same viewer to adopt the attitude necessary to aesthetically enjoy the framed object. In this sense, the margins of representation are the borders of pleasurable mimesis, aesthetic illusion, and pretence. All framing devices have the effect of sharply demarcating the boundaries of the representational space by ensuring both the island-like structure of pictures and the beholder’s awareness of being in front of “nothing but images”. This also holds true for the particular subset of framing devices that includes so-called “institutional” frames. Museums and art galleries, for instance, do not only physically delimit a space purposely designed for exhibiting certain kinds of objects; they also define a field of orientation and expectation, in the sense that visitors must comply with specific rules and requirements in order to be able to appreciate the framed objects not as part of the visual continuum of everyday life but as salient types of artefacts. Therefore, even if there is certainly truth in the saying that the nature of all cultural objects depends on the context in which they are being considered, one should also never forget that context means framework: it results from – literally – the work of the frame, that is, from a gesture of framing. The very presence of the frame invites the observer to switch from the spatio-temporal coordinates of actual reality to the fictional, knowingly illusory, “as-if” coordinates of representation. To put it into phenomenological terms: perception must give way to a quasi-perceptual state of image consciousness. Contrary to actual reality, the world of representation is defined by three basic properties: mediateness, referentiality, and separateness. All of these qualities are necessary for something to be called a 14 Unframing Aesthetics representation of something else: if even one of them is missing, then there can be neither representation nor image consciousness. By ensuring separateness, the frame has long been considered an integral part of the dispositif of representation, that is, a mechanism that every representation must include – to quote Louis Marin – ‘in order to present itself in its function, its functioning, and, indeed, its functionality as representation’. As formulated and systematised in the Renaissance, the modern concept of ‘representation’ is coextensive with the concept of ‘picture’ as ‘depiction’. Such a constellation of tightly interrelated notions is theoretically based on the assumption of a clear separation, enacted by a framing device, between the real world and the world of the image, as well as between perception and image consciousness. It is precisely this separateness, and, with it, the equation of representation with depiction, that can be (and has been) challenged in two different ways. The first is to attempt to bridge the apparently unbridgeable gap between the image and actual reality. This is the subject of the second chapter of this book. The trespassing of the allegedly never-to-be-trespassed threshold established by the frame can, in turn, unfold from two different points in two opposite directions: from the image-world to the real world, or vice versa. The first movement is paradigmatically exemplified by hyperrealistic pictures. Even though they are, indeed, the non plus ultra of representational images, they do their utmost to trick viewers into believing (if only for a moment) that they are perceiving reality in the flesh, not just its representation. The fusion of image and prototype can make the beholder unaware of pictorial differentiation, which is necessary for experiencing something as a representation of something else. In order to achieve maximum transparency and to convey the impression of non-mediateness, hyperrealistic pictures must dissimulate all elements that might betray their nature as representational artefacts. To be sure, frames are among these elements, for they “say” to the beholder: ‘What you see in here is but an image’. Now, the objective of hyperrealistic pictures is to conceal their being pictures: they are aimed to leave the fictional dimension of representation and enter our real-life environment. To reach this Introduction 15 goal, they must not be displayed in a context that clearly reveals what they strive to conceal, namely, their representational status. In other words, they need to be set out of frame. However, crossing the borders of the frame, and thus the boundaries of representation, can also work the other way, that is, moving from the real world to (or, more precisely, into) the imageworld. Although it proceeds in exactly the opposite direction as hyperrealistic pictures, this second movement, too, tends towards unframedness, its ultimate goal being to “pull” viewers into the image, plunging them in a new, self-consistent world. Throughout the history of mankind, the dream of immersion has resurfaced countless times, as attested by myths, legends, and science fiction narratives: from the allegory of Narcissus falling in love with his own reflection on a water surface only to drown in the attempt to reach it, to the various versions of the story of the Chinese artist penetrating into one of his pictures before disappearing within the painted landscape; from Descartes’s evil genius, offering the human mind a surrogate of reality indistinguishable from actual reality, to his numerous contemporary reinterpretations, beginning with the famous thought experiment of the ‘brain in a vat’ proposed by Daniel Dennett in 1978, taken up by Hilary Putnam in 1981, and adapted into film by the Wachowski sisters with The Matrix in 1999; from Strange Days’s cyberpunk poetics, where people can relive the experiences of others thanks to electronic devices that record the memories and physical sensations of those who wear them, to the futuristic, unsettling universe of Westworld, an “amusement” park allowing wealthy visitors to spend some time in a parallel world, free to live out their most perverse fantasies courtesy of hyperrealistic androids. Yet immersion is far from simply a matter of dreaming or imagination, as demonstrated by the stunning development of interactive virtual environments – to mention but the most recent case – that elicit in the perceiver a strong feeling of being incorporated into alternative realities characterised by the same immediateness, presentness, and framelessness heretofore regarded as the exclusive prerogative of flesh-bound reality. A prominent example of the potential offered by the newest technological advances has been provided by the United Nations Virtual Reality project, launched in 2015 and consisting of a 16 Unframing Aesthetics series of 360-degree short films focused on various humanitarian themes. In order to explain the idea behind the project and the crucial importance of using virtual reality technology for its implementation, a few months after the first videos came out, a clip was released on the official United Nations Web TV channel entitled Virtual Reality: Creating Humanitarian Empathy. It begins with a rapid sequence showing images of war, epidemics, refugee crises, and natural disasters. After a few seconds, the camera pulls back to reveal these images framed on a television screen. After claiming that ‘this is the way most of us are used to seeing these heart-wrenching events: on a screen in front of us, watching passively’, the voice-over asks: ‘What if you could step into the frame, and actually feel what it is like for the individuals on the ground?’ The rhetoric of empathy, immediateness, and transparency is exploited to celebrate the immersive quality of virtual reality and to contrast it with older media, the postulate being that photography, television, and traditional cinema, forced as they are to impose a distance between the world of the spectator and the world of the image, are unsuited to letting us experience what is really going on out there, namely, beyond the frame. Similar attempts to plunge users into virtual realities are becoming more and more popular. Although used for the most disparate purposes, they have a common trait in that they all aim to unframe representation, thus challenging the traditional notion of detached aesthetic experience. This “unframing strategy” found paradigmatic expression in 2017 at the 70th edition of the Cannes Festival, when Alejandro González Iñárritu surprisingly did not present a movie but an immersive installation, Carne y Arena. Equipped with a virtual reality headset and free to move inside a cavernous room with a sand-covered floor, the viewers, or rather the experiencers, found themselves caught up in a dramatic adventure following a group of unauthorised Mexican migrants snatched up by the United States Border Patrol while attempting a night-time border crossing. The impression of “being there”, incorporated into the virtual world, is inescapable: representation is replaced by presentation, while the traditional aesthetic attitude, characterised by contemplation, detachment, and distance, gives way to immersion. Introduction 17 Not surprisingly, and perfectly in line with the goal of the United Nations Virtual Reality project to plunge the experiencer into the picture, Iñárritu explicitly declared his intention to break ‘the dictatorship of the frame, within which things are just observed’. By literally entering the image-world, users go through a direct, first-person experience of the (re)presented events, where they feel less and less able to distinguish between the reality of the life-world and the “unreality” of the virtual world. No longer simple observers placed in front of images isolated from actual reality through some kind of framing apparatus, they instead become all-round experiencers placed within a virtual reality offering multisensory and kinaesthetic stimuli. And while Carne y Arena does not allow participants to do anything except move freely within its artificial environment, other simulated worlds already exist that grant users a level of interaction increasingly comparable to that of the “real world” – an expression which appears, at this point, more and more vague and almost deprived of its traditional meaning. By making images exit their “natural habitat” and mingle with reality in the flesh, or, on the contrary, by inviting the experiencer to enter the image-world, hyperrealism and immersion proceed in opposite directions. And yet, on closer inspection, they both testify to the very same strategy of subverting representation by corroding it from the inside, that is, by “stretching” it to the point where it ends up negating itself and turning into presentation. Although a wax figure or an immersive virtual reality environment are, indeed, hyper-representational, they do their best to be perceived as autonomous, non-representational entities. They are both the apotheosis of representation and its reductio ad absurdum, for while representation implies, by definition, a mediated experience, these types of images make a semblance of non-mediateness – a semblance nonetheless achieved precisely by getting the most of the technical or technological potential of the media involved. Immersive and interactive virtual environments therefore seem to confirm what Walter Benjamin said apropos of cinema, that ‘the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology’. Trespassing the threshold of the frame is not the only way to challenge the concept, and the many different practices, of representation. As described in the last chapter of this book, a 18 Unframing Aesthetics second, opposite strategy can be pursued. Rather than aiming at hyper-representation, one can strive for a zero degree of representation; rather than concealing the mediateness of representation, one can give it maximum visibility. In this case, paradoxically enough, the medium ceases to function as a medium: it stops mediating between the picture and its referent, thus emancipating itself from its century-old subservience to representation. Such a disentanglement of the traditional association between medium and representation brings about non-representation, just like hyperrealistic pictures and immersive environments do. Contrary to the latter, however, the exhibition of the medium is anti-representational from the very beginning: it does not come as a result of a process that pushes representation to its limits in an attempt to eventually turn it into presentation. Here, representation is challenged because it is considered too illusionistic (as opposed to not illusionistic enough). Consequently, the medium is pushed not towards transparency, but towards opacity: it is exhibited. This exhibition undermines the whole technical and theoretical apparatus underlying the idea of representation as fiction, a concept that found its most evident expression in the traditional notion of the ‘picture’. The frame is a sine qua non of pictorial experience: it is crucial for experiencing something as a picture-of something else that is not itself a picture. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, this notion of the picture, and with it the common, almost taken-for-granted equation of representation to depiction, came to be regarded as no longer adequate by painters such as Georges Seurat and Claude Monet, who consequently began to question the role played by the frame in defining the fictional character of pictorial representation. The fundamental separation that all framing devices produce between the objects enclosed within them and the surrounding environment came under attack: artists dared to challenge the concept itself of the threshold of representation first by painting the frame, then by reducing it to a minimum, and eventually by completely discarding it. This process culminated in the work of some of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism such as Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, who all embarked on a thoroughgoing programme of un-framing aimed at ensuring continuity and coherence between the actual world and Introduction 19 the world of the image, between reality and (alleged) unreality. If the frame provides separation, framelessness emphasises the presence of the “stripped”, naked artwork in the very same spatiotemporal dimension of the experiencer. The crisis of the easel picture, as Clement Greenberg once called it, therefore goes hand in hand with the crisis of the frame as a cornerstone of the theoretical system underpinning the modern concept of representation. This system is based on the notion of beauty as the sole and seemingly eternal ideal of art. The frame acts as a scaffolding for such an ideal. It establishes the coordinates of form, measure, and composition. It provides order and orientation. It suggests finiteness, completeness, coherence, and comprehensiveness. It sets up the Cartesian axes of simulation and fictionality. Accordingly, to remove the frame is to subvert all of these aspects of representation, replacing form with formlessness, finitude with infinitude, limitation with limitlessness – in short, beauty with the sublime. The transition from the frame to framelessness entails a dramatic change not only in the history of art, but also in the history of perception. As to whether this transition will (or rather can) ever be completed shall remain, at least in this book, an open question.