The ubiquity of the image

I have no conflict with the positions put forward by Joan and Radu, or with Joan invoking the line that runs through Gramsci and all that has been most intelligent, open and innovative -and freest- in the thinking of European communism. It’s more to my way of thinking, even if I am aware of the limits, than the reference to Trotskyite entryism, which I have opposed for thirty years… She who ‘enters’ never wins, I’m afraid.

It’s simply that I think that we have been both accomplices and willing victims of the system. We wanted to take a stand against the dominant ideologies which manifested themselves in pictures. We have done this by creating alternative images (Joan), by writing and editing (me), by teaching in a radical way and theorizing (Radu). We have been at the same time players, accomplices, critics and mainsprings of all these movements that have shaken up an image that no longer knew where it was. We have our responsibilities -our irresponsibilities, too- but I don’t believe that we are the worst… I still defend the right to entertain illusions and make mistakes.

Given that we agree on the need for actions that will affect the greatest number, I hope there will be a place online for my provocation -just a small provocation…- about the need to take the public space into account. To twist it, to pervert it, perhaps.

The need for pedagogy, about which all three of us are in agreement, reminds me of a sad experience. In 1982, when Jack Lang was Minister of Culture in France, about ten of us had a lot of meetings to develop what we called ‘a policy of image learning in school.’ The result was dossiers, report -no doubt buried away in drawers- and the ephemeral and since questioned creation of specialized ‘visual arts’ syllabuses. A way of negating the need for youngsters to become familiar with history of images.

Above and beyond the outrageous proposal for the presence of the image, with no function other than its presence, in the public space, I wonder if we might not be capable of inventing a method of teaching on the Internet.

In order to respond to Christian’s request, let’s clarify a few points. I’d like to qualify his assertion that it all depends on the dissemination of images, not on their nature. Without denying the importance of transmission, it seems to me that the nature is crucial. I said in an earlier message that the really subversive images are the ones that are not content simply to represent things, but call into question the status of the image and the nature of representation. These are the images that have the ability to lay bare the functioning of the world of images.

Christian is right when he says that the battle is unequal. Statistically, these images are not even a drop in the ocean of visual banality. However, the power of these images should not be engaged in a frontal attack against a very much larger number of enervating images: their impact is much stronger when their action is based on guerrilla tactics. In such an approach, numerical inferiority can be offset by the force and daring of the blow. One of the best examples is the famous book Sputnik by our friend Joan, a real hammer blow to the credulous acceptance of the veracity of images. The best results are obtained by way of the old Trotskyist strategy of entryism, first infiltrating the system the better to destroy it from within. Joan did this using the distribution channels of publishing, the museum or television while dismantling their mechanisms, and it’s what Matthias Bruggmann has done by publishing his photos in a recent issue of Time magazine. It’s slipping through the gaps in the system that works best.

Even so, this strategy of trying to subvert the world of images from the inside will never succeed unless it is accompanied by a genuine education in images from an early age: something that, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t exist anywhere at the moment.