Indieoma

Open Ideas Editor Mike Watson contributes a piece examining the notion of the artwork as an object independent of human interaction, and with it opens up an investigation into the artwork as it relates to the object-oriented philopsophies of Harman, Bryant, et al, as well as to Ray Brassier’s Nihilism.

It has been three millennia since I was jettisoned from a shuttle as part of the Cultural Space Program; an initiative intended on communicating with other life forms via artworks, music played towards distant stars and a film projected onto one of Saturn’s many moons.

As time went by it appeared that no one was much interested in me. Sure enough, alien spacecraft went past, with two on occasion stopping to examine me before speeding off unmoved by my subtle advances. It had occurred to no one that creatures who do not obey our laws of physics, do not possess any of our basic instrumentation, would find little interest in Velazquez’ female courtier, or, indeed, in the deftness with which she has been rendered in linseed and dark pigment.  
 
I had been ‘feeled’ by alien-insect feelers, which ascertained nothing of my firm bosoms, depicted, as they were, in two dimensions. I had been scanned from afar using the most intense means known to the universe, but my charms had been passed over – the wide black of my eyes failing to seduce creatures with ears for mouths and eyes with no balls.  

After what seems like 200 years or so I spied my mother planet obliterated in a storm of comets, it now appears grey and lifeless, like a cataract eye. And then, I assume, the system of monitoring my progress came to an end. Closed off and as indifferent as rock, I became a cipher for the entire human project.

I find myself so far removed from the context of my production, and of my reception o’er the years… those seedy and surreptitious glances in the halls of the Wallace Collection, where titter tatter, and the clip of heels masked a wanton desire and yearning after ‘art’, and whatever promise it held out for its human audience. But even back then I stood in isolation, a crude depiction of a woman long ago dead… A man came and stood in front of me, daily, with a notebook. He recorded and salvaged me from my isolation, and he drew inferences about me, about who I was… a Spanish mistress, a French duchess on the run, always a loose woman, helpless, captured and tamed by Velazquez’ brush. Yet, in fact, these inferences had no greater relation to reality than that of a passing comet as it sees a potential obstacle, or an alien being who sees in me nothing to be discerned from Velazquez’ initial intentions, and nothing, still more, that relates to the original model, voluptuous, pink cheeked, kissing lips, but all alone, a monad, completely closed to the advances of those around her -  a world of aliens to her and to each other.  

What of painting and what of art in a universe of cellular individuals and conglomerates, constantly colliding and missing each other, variously and all at once?  In any of this is there a meaning that might be ascertained? If, indeed, it was true that art did ever imbue ‘meaning’?  

The question we are really posed is whether the artwork, in existing beyond the demise of humanity, gains a significance over and above humanity, or whether it ceases to exist with no human there to perceive it. What status is accorded to the artwork jettisoned into space, unobserved? And, by inference, what status is then accorded to the human individual?

Problematically, if I, here, have no status the inference would be that humans have never in any case had status. If art can be said to have no status when unobserved by human eyes then humans, whose purpose is enshrined in cultural production – the ‘animal that talks’, that paints – have, in any case, only the illusory purpose that they project on to the artwork.  

However, if I do have meaning long after the demise of humanity the implication is that it was only I who ever had meaning and not humanity itself. My meaning was reflected on to humanity. But it was never real.  
 
In either case the form that I express – the big bosomed, voluptuous cheeky courtier – is more real both than the person I actually depict and the hand that depicted me; Velazquez. I am the cipher of a bizarre primitive game in which the painter tried to capture the beauty of the subject when in actual fact beauty is something that elides both painter and courtier as an illusion only present in the artwork. I had cast a shadow upon simple bodies which appeared then to copulate with me in fitful artistic productiion. And, of this bizarre ritual, nothing is left but me; the artwork.  

In this case the artwork is indeed a cipher for the meaningless of humanity – and one that plays a cruel joke in demanding the hand of the latter in its production. If this is the case then the artwork ultimately is a harbinger of truth, but a truth as cold and indifferent to humanity as science purportedly is.  

The pursed lips, ready to kiss, concealed always a mocking grin.

But if there is a consolation in all this, as aliens now pore over my surface and dissect me like a painting conservator working in reverse, it is in the obstinacy with which I have been produced, even in the face of the harsh facts I reveal.  

several millenia later…

Stumbling upon me the alien-scientist is astounded. They have found evidence of a being – the hand that made me – that creates meaning even, in a godless universe,  in its apparent absence. They have found a form of magic that elides even the knowledge of magic’s impossibility. A further investigation reveals the formation of the notion of beauty in this same ‘human’ culture and the depiction of the beauty inherent in ‘human’ lie  even in spite of their own effective knowledge , via Darwinistic scientific enquiry, of their base animalism.  

In light of these dicoveries,  which bring a tear even to the eye of the most unfeeling and rational alien-being scientist, it is with great surprise that this being learns, upon rushing to seek the wisdom of this most genial of being – the human – that this delightful ‘human’ being destroyed itself as a result of intolerance.  

It seems the rational knowledge of the basic meaninglessness of life, fostered since the beginning of the Enlightenment project, eventually won even over the anomaly that art presented. Put simply, there were two trajectories that ran thick through the development of human history, the alien-scientist learned. One towards creativity and one towards destruction. Once the latter had prospered there was no turning back.  

I spend the rest of eternity hanging in the dining hall of an intergalactic monarch – unbeknownst to him – upside down!  

It is with fondness I recall the intense bravery and honesty of the artist.  



Links to the other Open Ideas posts:

Philosophizing Now: Graham Harman Interviewed

3 Randomly Chosen Objects From the Studio: Paul Sakoilsky

ENG/ITA Caposud Magazine breaks new ground: Interview with Alfredo Giangaspero

The Return of Metaphysics: Nick Srnicek

Non Frontières: Karim Dimechkie