Speculation, Now: Essays and Artwork - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822358158 ISBN 13: 9780822358152

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2014

Synopsis

Interdisciplinary in design and concept, Speculation, Now illuminates unexpected convergences between images, concepts, and language. Artwork is interspersed among essays that approach speculation and progressive change from surprising perspectives. A radical cartographer asks whether "the speculative" can be represented on a map. An ethnographer investigates religious possession in Islam to contemplate states between the divine and the seemingly human. A financial technologist queries understandings of speculation in financial markets. A multimedia artist and activist considers the relation between social change and assumptions about the conditions to be changed, and an architect posits purposeful neglect as political strategy. The book includes an extensive glossary with more than twenty short entries in which scholars contemplate such speculation-related notions as insurance, hallucination, prophecy, the paradox of beginnings, and states of half-knowledge. The book's artful, nonlinear design mirrors and reinforces the notion of contingency that animates it. By embracing speculation substantively, stylistically, seriously, and playfully, Speculation, Now reveals its subversive and critical potential.

Artists and essayists include William Darity Jr., Filip De Boeck, Boris Groys, Hans Haacke, Darrick Hamilton, Laura Kurgan, Lin + Lam, Gary Lincoff, Lize Mogel, Christina Moon, Stefania Pandolfo, Satya Pemmaraju, Mary Poovey, Walid Raad, Sherene Schostak, Robert Sember, and Srdjan Jovanović Weiss.

Published by Duke University Press and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School
 

About this title

About the Author

Vyjayanthi Venuturupalli Rao is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School.

Prem Krishnamurthy, a designer and curator based in New York, is a founder of the award-winning design studio Project Projects.

Carin Kuoni is Director and Curator of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, a public research laboratory dedicated to exploring the relationship between political and aesthetic practices.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Speculation, Now

Essays and Artwork

By Vyjayanthi Venuturupalli Rao, Prem Krishnamurthy, Carin Kuoni

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2014 Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-5815-2

Contents

Foreword Carin Kuoni, 
Speculation, Now Vyjayanthi Venuturupalli Rao, 
Design Notes Prem Krishnamurthy, 
MODELS Josiah McElheny, 
Visible and Invisible Sides of Reproduction Boris Groys, 
VERIFICATION Iddo Tavory, 
OBFUSCATION Orit Halpern, 
Dreams, Magic, and Mirrors: More Histories of Extraversion and Speculation in Central Africa Filip De Boeck, 
WITCHCRAFT Peter Geschiere, 
MIRRORING Luke Fowler, 
SPECULATIVE HEDGING Kenan Halabi, 
Hedge/Hog: Speculative Action in Financial Markets Satya Pemmaraju, 
THE CONTEMPORARY Katherine Carl, 
EXCEPTION, THE STATE OF Chen Tamir, 
METAHISTORY Judith Barry, 
Preface to the third edition Walid Raad, 
The Ethics of Deep Time Trevor Paglen, 
WITHDRAWAL Graham Harman, 
Colors, Cash, Fabric, and Trim: Fast-fashion Families in Downtown L.A. Christina Moon, 
RISK Larissa Harris, 
MODELS David Reinfurt, 
UNLIKENESS McKenzie Wark, 
TRADING MARKETS Byron Tucker, 
Synchronicities Sherene Schostak, 
CREDIT Dushko Petrovich, 
INSURANCE Elka Krajewska, 
Post-Racial America? Addressing Racial Inequality Darrick Hamilton & William Darity, Jr., 
STATES OF HALF-KNOWLEDGE: THE ECONOMY OF READING Marysia Lewandowska, 
INFRASTRUCTURE Nader Vossoughian, 
Psychics Special Lin + Lam, 
Speculation with Data: Remittances, Refugees, and Migration Laura Kurgan, 
PROTOTYPE Benjamin Aranda, 
STABILITY/INSTABILITY smudge studio, 
Diary: Towards an Architecture of Balkanization Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, 
BROKEN PROMISES, OR A QUICK SKETCH OF THE PROTOTYPE Jamer Hunt, 
RUIN Beth Stryker, 
MODELS Brian McGrath, 
NEGLECT Reem Fadda, 
Image: Visual Speculation and Political Change Victoria Hattam, 
Night Thoughts: Unintended Consequences in the Modern Economy Mary Poovey, 
GAMBLING Elizabeth Thomas, 
On the Matter of Change: Three Scenes of Collective Action Robert Sember, 
RISK Holland Cotter, 
TOXIC DEBT Dushko Petrovich, 
INVESTMENT Özge Ersoy, 
over/sight Lize Mogel, 
The Barzakh of the Image and the Speculative Scene of Possession Stefania Pandolfo, 
INTENTIONAL FAILURE Hakan Topal, 
SHADOW WORLD Metahaven, 
FORTUITOUS Aleksandra Wagner, 
HALLUCINATION Nicolas Langlitz, 
HALLUCINATION Joachim Koester, 
Taking a Trip Gary Lincoff, 
MAYBE Sarah Oppenheimer, 
EXCEPTION, SENSITIVITY AS Chen Tamir, 
The Paradox of Beginnings Angie Keefer & Lucy Skaer, 
Speculation, After the Fact Arjun Appadurai, 
MIRRORING Amie Siegel, 
!?!? ... Hans Haacke, 
Speculation, Now The Expanded Field, 
Biographies, 
Acknowledgments, 
Vera List Center for Art and Politics, 
Considering Forgiveness, 
Index, 
INFRASTRUCTURE Céline Condorelli, 
Colophon, 

CHAPTER 1

Visible and Invisible Sides of Reproduction

Boris Groys

Speculation is a word with at least two meanings. The first is "mirroring (46 & 206)," from the Latin speculum (mirror). Here speculation means a true reflection of reality that presents itself as an empirical fact. But speculation can also mean a reflection on reality that may be hidden behind its empirical image. In other words, speculation is a reflection on the mirror and not merely the reflection in the mirror. Speculation refers to the double character of any reproduction that has its visible and invisible sides. In the following I would like to speculate on the difference between modern (mechanical) and contemporary (53) (digital) forms of reflection/reproduction/speculation.

How original is our contemporaneity—is it merely a repetition of modernity and its innovations, projects, and frustrations? This question is equally relevant for contemporary art and politics. I believe that our contemporary time is, indeed, a repetition of modernity, but it is an original repetition, and it is radically different from the modern. I would like to analyze this difference by comparing two modes of reproduction: mechanical and digital.

The modern mode of reproduction is the mechanical. In his classic essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin famously assumed the possibility of perfect reproduction, which made it no longer possible to visually distinguish between an original and its copy. He then raised the question of whether the elimination of the visual distinction between original and copy meant the elimination of the distinction itself. As we know, Benjamin answered this question in the negative. The disappearance of the visual distinction between the original and the copy does not eliminate another—invisible, but for Benjamin no less real—distinction between them: the original has an aura that the copy does not. Benjamin's formulations are well known: "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its here and now, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be." He continues: "These 'here' and 'now' of the original constitute the concept of its authenticity, and lay basis for the notion of a tradition that has up to the present day passed this object along as something having a self and an identity." The copy, by contrast, is siteless, ahistorical: from the beginning it appears as potential multiplicity. Accordingly, for Benjamin photography and film are the most modern art forms. From their inception they are mechanically produced and destined for topologically undetermined circulation. In other words, they are originally copies. Thus, the age of mechanical reproduction cannot produce anything truly original—it can only eliminate the aura, or erase the originality of the originals, that it has inherited from the previous times.

At first glance, this claim of essential non-originality of modernity seems a bit strange, because the notion of originality was at the center of the modern culture and, especially, modernist art. Indeed, every serious artist of the avant-garde insisted on the originality of his or her art. However, their notion of originality was completely different from Benjamin's. He did not ask the question: how original—new, different—is an object compared to objects from the historical past? Rather, Benjamin was interested in the ability of the artwork to secure its originality for the future. For Benjamin, to be original means to be irreproducible. Originality is the relationship of the artwork not to the past, but to the future.

Benjamin's concept of originality is obviously rooted in his understanding of nature, because only the natural is supposed to be inimitable and irreproducible by technical means. Not accidentally, Benjamin uses the experience of being in the middle of a splendid Italian landscape as a model (27 & 75 & 130) of an auratic experience that cannot be reproduced without losing its "here and now." Even if Benjamin is ready to accept that nature can be technically reproduced and perfectly simulated on the level of its materiality and its visual form, he still insists on the impossibility to reproduce its inscription in the here and now. One can say, it is dependent on the genius loci—the invisible spirit that gives to visible things their place.

On the other hand, contemporary, digital reproduction is by no means siteless, its circulation is not topologically undetermined, and it does not present itself in the form of multiplicity. On the Internet every piece of data has its address—and, accordingly, its place. This place is determined by the Internet's genius loci—the URL. The same data with a different address is different data. The aura does not get lost but, rather, replaced with a different aura. On the Internet the circulation of digital data produces not copies but new originals. And this circulation is perfectly traceable. The individual datum never gets deterritorialized.

Moreover, every image or text on the Internet has not only its specific unique place but also unique moment of appearance. It is not so much the digital image or text itself as the image or text file, the digital data, that remains identical through the process of its reproduction and distribution. The image file is not an actual image—the file is invisible. The digital image is an effect of the visualization of the invisible image file, of invisible digital data. Accordingly, a digital image cannot be strictly copied (as an analogue, mechanically reproducible image can) but always only newly staged or performed. The digital image begins to function like a piece of music, whose score, as it is generally known, is not identical to the piece—the score being not audible, but silent. One can argue that digitalization turns visual arts into performing arts.

This performative character of digital reproduction means, however, that the visual correspondence between the original and the copy—or, rather, the visual correspondence among different visualizations of the same image file—cannot be guaranteed. As a music performance is always different from other performances of the same score, a digitalized image or text appears always in a new form—determined by the formats and software that a particular user applies when he or she makes the digital data appear on a screen. As users, we rely on our computers to visit the digital data at its place and give it time to appear "here and now." Thus, every digital copy has its own "here and now—an aura of originality—that a mechanical copy does not have. This change can be described as a moment of break between modernity and contemporaneity: digital reproduction is original (compared to mechanical reproduction) because it produces originals and not copies.

In this sense one could speak about digitalization as a return to nature. However, I would argue that the digital age does not only effectuate a return to the natural, but also to the super-natural. We make the digital files appear by clicking on their names. By so doing we activate invisible programs that deliver these files to us. One could say that we conjure the data as earlier we were conjuring spirits by calling their names. However, in this way the spirits—good or bad spirits, gods or demons—become not only visible to us, but we also become visible to them. This is precisely what happens today when we use the Internet to call the data: we become visible, traceable for the spirits that we call. It is no secret that big corporations, state agencies, and others permanently track our personal use of the Internet to create an image of our behavior, tastes, environment, and personal lives. Every production of a digital image is at the same time a manifestation of our own image—an act of self-visualization. Making a digital copy, I make a copy of myself—and offer this copy to an invisible spectator hidden behind the surface of my personal computer's screen. This is also a fundamental difference between mechanical and digital reproduction.

Friedrich Nietzsche continued his famous pronouncement "God is dead" by writing that we lost the spectator of our souls—and because of that, the souls themselves. After Nietzsche and during the whole epoch of mechanical reproduction we heard a lot about the demise of subjectivity. We heard from Martin Heidegger that die Sprache spricht (language speaks), rather than an individual who speaks the language. We heard from Marshall McLuhan that the medium was the message. Later Derridean deconstruction and Deleuzian machines of desire rid us of the last illusions concerning the possibility of identifying and stabilizing subjectivity.

However, now the universal spectator is back, and our "virtual" or "digital souls" have become traceable and visible again. Our experience of contemporaneity is defined not so much by the presence of data to us as spectators but, rather, by our presence to the gaze of the hidden and unknown spectator. We do not know if this unknown spectator is the benign God or a malin génie. Of course, we can—to a certain degree—analyze the activities of Google and Facebook, but we cannot exclude the possibility of a completely unknown spectator—because this possibility is technically given. In other words, the hidden universal spectator of the Internet can be imagined only as a subject of universal conspiracy. The reaction to this universal conspiracy necessarily takes the form of a counter-conspiracy: one will to protect one's soul from an evil eye. The contemporary subjectivity can no longer rely on its dissolution in the flow of signifiers because this flow has become controllable and traceable.

Of course, individuals and organizations try to escape this total visibility by creating sophisticated systems of passwords and data protection. Today, subjectivity has become a technical construction: the contemporary subject is defined as an owner of a set of passwords that he or she knows and other people do not. The contemporary subject is primarily a keeper of a secret. In a certain way this is a very traditional definition of the subject: the subject was always defined as knowing something about oneself that only God might know but that other people could not because they are ontologically prevented from reading one's thoughts. However, today, one has not an ontologically but, rather, a technically protected secret. The Internet is the place at which the subject is originally constituted as transparent and observable—and only afterwards adds technical protection to conceal the originally revealed secret. However, every technical protection can be broken. Today, the hermeneutiker has become a hacker. The contemporary Internet is a place of cyber wars in which the secret is the prize. To know the secret means to put the subject that is constituted by this secret under control—the cyber wars are the wars of subjectivation and de-subjectivation. But these wars can take place only because the Internet is originally the place of transparency. Thus, a new Utopian dream emerges which is the truly contemporary dream—it is a dream of an unbreakable code word that can forever protect our subjectivity. We want to define ourselves as a secret that would be even more secretive than the ontological secret—the secret that even God would not be able to break. The paradigmatic example of such a dream can be found in the practice of WikiLeaks.

In recent times we have become accustomed to protests and revolts in the name of particular identities and interests; the revolts in the name of universal projects, such as Liberalism or Communism, seem to belong to the past. But the activities of WikiLeaks serve no particular identities or interests. Their goal is general and universal: to guarantee the free flow of information. Thus, the phenomenon of WikiLeaks signals a reappearance of universalism in politics—not just universalism's return, but also a deep transformation of the notion of universalism over recent decades. WikiLeaks is not a political party. It does not offer any universal vision of society, political program, or ideology that would be designed to spiritually or politically unify mankind. Rather, WikiLeaks offers a sum of technical means that would allow the universal access to any specific, particular content. The universality of idea is here substituted by the universality of access.

At the same time, the practice of WikiLeaks demonstrates that universal access can be provided only in the form of universal conspiracy. In an interview Julian Assange says:

So if you and I agree on a particular encryption code, and it is mathematically strong, then the forces of every superpower brought to bear on that code still cannot crack it. So a state can desire to do something to an individual, yet it is simply not possible for the state to do it—and in this sense, mathematics and individuals are stronger than superpowers.

Transparency is made possible here only by radical non-transparency. Universal openness is based on the most perfect closure. The invisibility of contemporary subjectivity is guaranteed as long as its password is not hacked. Here we don't witness any more the reduction of the invisible aura (or soul)—the reduction that opens the way for the uncontrolled mechanical reproduction of the visible objects. Rather, we are confronted with the password-protected invisibility that guarantees to the subjectivity the control over the practice of its digital manifestations.

VERIFICATION

The dream of verification was the empiricist attempt to ground both science and language in observations. To get rid of pesky metaphysics and other speculative attempts to come to terms with the world, philosophers of science required assertions to be verifiable — that is, to be consonant with independent observations. As philosophers of the early twentieth-century Vienna Circle held, statements that couldn't be verifiable in such a way should be discarded as idle speculation, or at least be met with the philosopher's stony silence.

As a profusion of critics has argued ever since, however, verification occupies an unattainable horizon. Karl Popper noted that some theories are verified no matter what the observations are: anything an analysand may tell her analyst would only strengthen the analyst's explanatory framework; for the believer, any observation proves the existence of God. Verification, it turns out, may not be such a straightforward criterion for evaluating either meaning or science. Moreover, as others have noted, the methods and standards for verifying observations are themselves theoretically informed; it is impossible to access observations from an innocent point of view.

For all the skepticism, a version of verification lives on. It lives as some philosophers' attempt to gain "empirical adequacy," and, more importantly, it remains central in the pragmatist notion that meaning is always defined through its consequences for and in action. This, as William James argued, is also the case for the notion of truth. Truth is made through the resonance of experiences and arguments. It is a weaker notion of verification — rather than being consonant with a mind-independent reality, pragmatist verification is a principle of experience. And yet, the juxtaposition of speculation and experience remains central. We go about our lives speculating, but also refuting, provisionally verifying, and rethinking our speculations in relation to the experiences we encounter.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Speculation, Now by Vyjayanthi Venuturupalli Rao, Prem Krishnamurthy, Carin Kuoni. Copyright © 2014 Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822358158
• ISBN 13: 9780822358152
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Rao Vyjayanthi, Krishnamurthy Prem, Kuoni Carin