art+argument concluded day one of the ‘Fiction
as Method’ symposium on the 4th December 2015; Friction
were our hosts at the Nordflügel, Gessnerallee. Eduardo Simantob opened a sturdy defence of the motion ‘In fiction nothing is taboo’ by stating the necessary
freedom of art. “Fiction is the best realm of the imagination, the last realm
of free expression. And of course the most basic concept or conception of
fiction is that it has absolutely no regard for reality or no regard for truth
or facts. And more than that, art in general, fiction in particular, should
never be the vehicle for any other agent or agency. It’s not in the service of
any other government or idea, it’s not supposed to educate, to bring awareness
or whatever. Actually I would argue that fiction is there to confuse and amuse.”
Fiction might be based on reality, but retains its freedom, Simantob argued.
Freedom of interpretation is essential too. “Fiction assuming itself as
fiction, with no regard for facts and reality, is maybe the only last refuge of
a free exercise of our imagination,” he closed.
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| Photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters |
Daniel Blochwitz countered this, finding taboos in fiction, with a
polemical examination of several images of historic events. Théodore
Géricault may have recorded The Raft of
the ‘Medusa’ in 1818, but similar images of happenings in the Mediterranean
are horribly commonplace today; we have, apparently, learned little in the
intervening centuries. “While the paintings affect us even years after the
actual events—the way they stir our imagination and sense of empathy—photographs
seem to have lost most of their ability to touch us. Even though we can
conclude from the photographs taken that the photographer has personally
witnessed the depicted event, we are unable to turn tragedy into empathy, let
alone into solidarity and action. While Goya and Géricault were able to use
their paintings to mobilize people, contemporary press photographs rarely are
anything but an end in itself: they fill space and sell news.” Blochwitz
posited that paintings stand for fiction, while photographs in this instance
are reality. Yet fiction needs a connection to reality to have an impact, to
maintain the belief and engagement of the reader or viewer. Photography “straddles
both, fiction and non-fiction, with a simultaneous need for the suspension of
belief and disbelief. In fact, one might call photography “realist fiction”.
But this seesaw of fiction-non-fiction has an increasingly heavy burden of
proof on the belief side, as we increasingly grow weary of the ratio of truth
communicated through the images we consume. As Baudrillard writes in The Spirit of Terrorism, ‘The image
consumes the event, in the sense that it absorbs it and offers it for
consumption.’” Blochwitz went on to examine the photographic constructions of artists
like Jeff Wall and Martha Rosler, and concluded with the point at which
fiction, fact and taboo collide: “I wish we would give non-fiction photographs
the same benefit of a doubt, cast aside our PoMo-cynicism, and suspend our
disbelief. Because the alternative is that we will get used to the worst images
of the 20th Century and suddenly our civilization, our communities will accept
again what we thought to be absolute taboos. Taboos in a real world and horrors
perpetrated against real human beings ...”
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| Philip Guston, The Studio, 1969 |
Emily Rosamond’s opening echoed some of
Blochwitz’ sentiments, while claiming those arguments for the defence. She
unpacked the relationship between fiction and taboo. “So what is it that
fiction can do with taboo, with the repressed, with the most difficult subject
matter to talk about, whether that’s personal trauma, political trauma, whether
that’s the massive political violence of late capitalism.” She borrowed a quote
from Slavoj Zizek’s Plague of Fantasy
in which he argues that fiction is fundamentally ideological. Zizek writes that
narrative emerges ‘in order to resolve some fundamental antagonism by
rearranging its terms into a temporal succession’. “So if narrative is in some
way a base ingredient to fiction,” said Rosamond, “if narrative is in some way
always a fiction, always a way of fictioning, then for Zizek it’s fundamentally
repressive as a medium, because it tries to smooth over, scrape over the basic
real antagonism that we are always dealing with under the surface of our everyday
experience. And yet perhaps Zizek misses the point. Because it is precisely in
this kind of smoothing over that narrative can achieve, that it’s possible for
fiction to invent new kinds of relation between antagonisms, to actually dredge
them up to the surface and air them as something to be doctored or workshopped.
And so this might be likened to the idea that fiction can actually invent a
symptom.” From here Rosamond moved on to Lacan’s idea late in his career that
the – truly great – artist might have the chance of transforming their
subjectivity and inventing their own symptom. Artists “who could actually use
narration, use narrative and use fiction in such an idiosyncratic way that it
could actually speak to the real. And through that produce something of a
relationship to desire that would actually be fiction’s highest calling. A way
of profoundly unfixing the psycho-political status quo.” She cited artists like
Vladimir Nabukov, Kathy Acker and Philip Guston as among the few who can truly
create abject fictions, identifying with “the most abhorrent subject position
imaginable…And why might this kind of upsetting of the psycho-social status quo
work best in fiction? I would argue it’s because fiction can be a kind of
abstract relation to territory. So the documentary image always makes a
sacrifice of its subject, and the image of the little boy washed up on the
beach is the perfect example of this, sacrifices its own subject to attain its
political purpose which works through an affective politics. Fiction, on the
other hand, the violence of a Kathy Acker novel, does not relate to an actual
person, it doesn’t have that representative.”
Damian Christinger continued with a
statement that would render his opponents’ words null and void: their arguments
were arguments of the 20th century – Western, male thoughts. “What I
want to argue is that in the 21st century the arguments need to be
different. First of all, we finally live in a truly globalised world. Which
means that the Western white male approach is not the only right one. The truly
globalised world means that the First Nations of Canada, and the Tupiniquim of
the Amazon, for example, have as much say in the debate we’re having as the male,
white, Western group. In those other societies some taboo is at the core of
their understanding of the world. I don’t believe it is our right to go there
and tell them that our fiction, that our fictionalisation of the world doesn’t
need to respect their taboo. Why is that so important? Because in the 21st
century the problems we face are global problems, they can only be addressed
together.” A degree of respect is needed, leaving a core of taboo that will not
be addressed by fiction, “left alone so that every culture has its own
reservoir of core taboos which holds it together and which makes it able to act
together with the rest of us.”
Needless to say, Christinger’s words were
challenged, and the opposition too took aim at their opponents. Nonetheless,
at the close the audience judged the proposition the more skilful in this instance, even if their opinions were not necessarily shared.
Many
thanks to Monica Ursina Jäger and Damian Christinger for the invitation to hold
art+argument within the symposium, and to all participants, including Damian,
who contributed to a highly enjoyable and rewarding debate. Please remember that the participants were playing roles they had been assigned and may not agree with the statements above!
