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A small shock hit me recently. I appeared on the TV with the the title "Media Artist" under my name. What the fuck, I mean, huh? Neither nor, I would like to think, even moreso in the context, the preceding interview was with a fellow given the same title referring to an installation / object / situation of "his" that took something that was fun and normal and added a virtual net-based interactivity to it that made it disfunction at apparently random intervals. If that is the work of a "media artist" then, my goodness gracious me, not me. And even if not, then what? Perhaps he was wrongly titled, perhaps they hit the target with me. Scary thought. This expression is somehow distasteful to me and probably to other people like me. What the hell could it mean? So I hit upon Peter Lamborn Wilson's "Response to Tactical Media Manifesto: A Network of Castles" and I wonder whether this has something to do with what I'm supposed to be. I'm not really sure. Let's look at this. Media. Artist. The second looks like a dangerous enough term, something we all hate, something we all should be, something so loaded with added meaning and extra interpretations that I have absolutely _no_ idea what it could mean for now. So let's stick with the first term. Media. The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck as I attempt to stay still and continue. Wilson identifies tactical media as a form of media that, while necessarily dealing in representation (for that is what media does, it mediates, it represents), it does so at a lower or lesser level (whatever that might mean) but follows a trajectory that takes it towards ever greater mediation (= representation), until it crashlands on or in the black hole of Capital (writ large). So there is this media business (or busyness), a wide-ranging term. There are strategic media, the clean ones, there is a form of media that is filth-based, organic, the tactical media. There are other forms that include aspects of Capital as an extreme point of representation, there is thus a non-Capital based form as a result of being able to define a particular point where media and capital intersect. This perhaps lets me breathe a little easier; there is life inside media after all, but perhaps only to the extent that the media is not total. There is some kind of morality emerging here. I see media as some kind of surface, some manifold, a landscape perhaps, with a particular region intersected by a giant luminescent orange cylinder that is clean and is capital. This is the "bad end" of media, it is surrounded by a region of strategic media, the badlands, the further we are away from here, the better. This is a morality that remains mainly unspoken. Thus by this morality, media is better when less, when less representation is present, when less mediation is taking place. When media becomes total, when it mediates completely, then we are completely represented, the map becomes the territory and we blow away in the wind like some flapping tourist guide to the Maralinga test site. The other end of media is then _immediatism_, methods without mediation, breast to breast interaction. Somehow the other evil word is aching to be let in here, to be given room to breathe, to make its point, to take to the pedestal for a change. Artist. Art. Antoon van den Braembussche (sp?) said that art is, in some sense, about memesis (not memetics, a vast difference), it is about similarity, contructing representations. Of what, in what, and why are questions left open by this particular observation as to the possible use of the word art, but in this context, we see some kind of tautological connection that leaves the word media artist perhaps almost meaningless. At first glance. An artist represents, i.e. mediates, thus we have a possible interpretation of "media artist" as "media mediator". Silly. No wonder I felt insulted. But perhaps not. A mediator must mediate _between_ things. A mediator is only lightly involved in these things, a mediator remains aloof, or at least noninvolved to a significant degree. A media mediator lies between the media and...what? Either the what is mediated to the media, the media itself is the target, perhaps the most boring target possible, or the "what" is the target. In the interests of charity, let's assume that the second case applies, and see where we end up. The "what" must necessarily be the public in some sense, the receiver or client of the mediator's attentions. We might say that the mediator is representing the media to the public, is constructing some kind of object or structure that images the media and opens structure for perusal. Here we find ourselves once again caught in the realm of possible misinterpretation of the word media, as I write this I am falling into this hegemionised homogenised image of the media as the capital image machine. No, this is not a sufficiently broad nor dense imagination of media, media is the mechanism of mediation, is the things we use to mediate, whether broadcast television or one-to-one sex chat lines, handwritten letters or talkback radio. Mediation, if we push our luck and the definitions a little further, can even move on to the distances themselves, where all difference between the self and the perceived becomes a part of the mediation and we are left with a state where we cannot deny that the act of perception requires necessarily an act of mediation, that immediatism is, in some absolute way, impossible as anything other than a vector, it can never be a position or place. Percption is necessarily mediated, mediation is the act of perception which can never me immediate. We are left with perception as the hobgoblin, the necessary evil, but I cannot even begin to view perception as an evil in the way that the word media makes my hackles rise. Landing on our feet and trying to keep running, we have the phrase "perception mediator" as the subtitle on the screen. Somehow my neck hairs are not quite so prickly, although there is a reminiscence. Mediating the acts of perception, developing models and methods of perception, twisting perceptions. Performing the Occam's razor minimal twist once again, taking one perceptual parameter and reversing it or twisting it orthogonal. Making perceptual structure apparent, raising awareness thereof. This sounds sort of like what I do, it sounds like something I want to be doing more of. It doesn't involve any pretentiousness of self-labelling in some elevated forum. The mediator is the peacemaker, the facilitator of an understanding, perhaps opening a window for the understanding of perceptual methods and misunderstandings. This is not something to be ashamed of. "Media Artist" however, hmm, bad taste in the back of my throat. Next time I get Mediated (writ large) I'll try and get the label "Perception Mediator" inserted after my name. At least I'll have a laugh. |
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Tactical Media |  |