aharon on October 10th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
A few points to make room for redundancy. Some points are redundant. Probably, on a complicated guestimated formula of averages, 80% to 90% is redundant. That kind of co-relates with the amount of redundant genetic material we all have.
* Redundant as Junk
I had a chat with a curator recently. She said that most art projects that get commissioned, in her view, are redundant, in other words, junk. Don’t worth the effort, to put it politely..
However, if someone didn’t think of some works being redundant, the few works elevated to be considered as unique, could hardly exist, could they?
Another point of redundancy as junk and the market of art world is the issue of investment. As most “investments” in capitalist market economy go, they are based on betting. One might bet that this and that company will do well, and they might bet that X art product will keep or increase their value. Without having the possibility of redundant - junk - work, all such calculations will be impractical.
* Redundant as copy
Someone, my memory allege that it was Picasso, said something along the lines: All artists copy from one another, great artists disguise it best. There is a certain insight in that notion because we all hyper influence one another, we can easily not knowingly copy, and knowingly copy because its our nature. James Joyce was known to go parting with a little notebook where he used to write sentences he happened to hear, and later incorporate into books.
Influence might also be described as zeitgeist, the spirit of the time. Take dada for example. Art history books are fairly happy describing the Zuirich and New-York dada as 2 separate groups that somehow came across all too similar ideas. The artistic quality that’s attached, in this case, is due to the perceived non-contact between the 2 groups - hence it all falls neatly into traditional art world views of “originality”.
This view of “originality” is confined to “people we care to mention”, hence the notion of “copy” has to come into greater scrutiny itself. When dealing with a product you know is not a product of mechanical/digital copying process, how do you know something might be a copy?
Check Les Demoiselles d’Avignon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Demoiselles_d’Avignon - a product seen as Picasso’s, and one which in the 100 years its been with us, has seen its economical value increase. Now, please take a good look at that product, do you see the mask-like faces? Keep that in mind and add the fact that a few years prior to making this product, there was a great exhibition in Paris which included what we might call “world art”. Looking at the picture, I think one can easily imagine young Picasso walking through the exhibition and a flash light goes in his brain as stops and wonder in front of African masks..
Thing is, that this is not an invention of my own imagination, people knew that exhibition infused ideas into art, music and dance.
In a way, it can be said that the greatness of the picture is that a european guy decided to do what some guys did in Africa for years.
This is a product based on copying other works that is too convenient to ignore. The copy renders its inspiration redundant.
* Copy based redundancy as power
In one of his prints, Dalli decided to use the following strategy. Tell people that you make X copies and get them to buy in special edition prices. Then print X++ copies and sell them to these who didn’t get to buy the special edition.. As seen by his moustache, Dalli was a great marketeer employing his position of power against cultural perceptions of originality and the redundant junkability of the copy.
Indeed, the copy and cascading quality, can become omnipotent as the product, without the need for an “original” can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Take Warhal with his dollar note prints. The depiction of dollar notes multiples on a print format is both ironic and symbolic of the power invested in the redundancy of the copy. Everyone can have a dollar note, the value comes with the power we agree to attach with these copies. The fact that one think they can get more copies and more of higher numerical value, might energise them to try and work harder. However, the system works on a balance based on the number of redundant notes in circulation… (e.g. similar to dalli’s prints, if there are too many in circulation, the currency/notes will have less value..)
* Power to value
Since the art market has to keep its value, like a currency, it has to have mechanisms that denote power to “originals” and detract power from “copies”. This practice can work within a singular art market that through its shared information can have a process by which products are being perceived to be “originals” and “copies”.
This works in a binary world of copies and originals which the participants allow the powers-that-be to set the rules of value. In this sense, the redundancy is in effect held by the majority of participants who agree to follow the value judgement set by the few.
* Traditions as copies
The fact that, for example, each and every xmass someone in New York will dress up as santa is a testimony to the power of traditions. In practices copies from one generation to another, we do not simply copy and produce it, we also value the very fact that its’ a copy. Here we see that from one perspective, the copy can be viewed as redundancy - lots and lots of a kind - but also valued abundancy as people place their little dear ones to que up to santa’s lap in the grotto..
Once the copy IS the order of the day, an original, for example a Bin-Laden look-alike santa is the order of redundancy..
* Redundancy in the market
See the report on the economic benefits of “fair use” in the USA economy…
http://www.ccianet.org/artmanager/uploads/1/FairUseStudy-Sep12.pdf
I will end this, longer than anticipated, 1st post by mentioning that after some of Duchamp’s readymades where cleared of his flat, he went out to buy them again..
All the best!
Aharon
(See: making room for redundancy)
October 12th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
i’ve been watching this project from across the usa and i am intrigued and i’d like some more information, if someone would be interested in helping me understand.
from what i can tell, “making room for redundancy” seems to be about recuperating the concept of redundancy within art. largely, it’s a dirty word because of the art world’s valorization of originality and authorship and how these myths seem necessary to produce economic value for collectors of art objects (objects, cut off from the world, privatized, and therefore potentially owned). redundancy undermines originality, individual authorship, and privately owned property. the first couple pages of verification describe how a global information network increases anxiety over being redundant and alludes to the embarassment when this is discovered. (this opens up another discussion about something like vvork maybe?)
aharon points out that copying has a long and productive history within art (although the copying is always an original act) and culture at large. in other words, redundancy is a healthy force, even within “traditional” contexts.
am i representing this accurately? i was thinking recently about some redundant initiatives in los angeles - surveys of alternative art spaces. it’s not the redundancy that is problematic but the lack of acknowledgement that each survey gives to the others. i think my implicit conclusion is that these redundant initiatives repeatedly fish from the same pond and if these initiatives communicated with one another and shared findings, then they would build a stronger representation of the situation of alternative spaces. but if i look a little deeper, i’m saying that this communication would drive projects to not be redundant, to go beyond, to find something new (in short, i’ve returned to the tropes of originality and progress). nevertheless, i feel like we’re in the same boat here, but i’m missing some aspects about what “making room for redundancy” means.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
“Making room for redundancy” might simply mean “making room for community”. I believe Jacques Ranciere, with his notion of “distribution of the sensible” (though i’m absolutely aware of its flaws), may help here. If we agree that meaning and value of an art work is/are shared within communities, which are formed, according to Ranciere, by the “regime of identification, in which we perceive art”, by the objective politics resulted in the emergence of “committed” work, but not at all by “the power of few “as it’s noted in the previous posting - community, which facilitates the distribution of the meaning of an art work… so if we agree with it, that means we should expect to have redundant “junk”, copies, repetitions and cross-references. In this sense, redundancy (if we are to recuperate this notion) is a SPACE, within which something not only gets distributed, shared, copied, or reproduced, but also becomes a reason for something else. That can explain the proliferation of LA alternative spaces, or similar music scores, or similar buildings (take Bauhaus’ ideas in the public housing projects across the globe as an example). So, there should be no judgment of redundancy as, according to Ranciere, “there are no criteria. there are formulas that are equally available whose meaning is often is fact decided upon by a state of conflict that is exterior to them.”
When writing this, I’m listening to two disks of Miles Davis’ “Milestones” and thinking: all his music is one lengthy sound, which is absolutely redundant, but it creates space, from which a couple of his great melodies emerged…
All my best,
Olga
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:25 am
i think the concept of stigmergy, proposed by pierre-paul grasse 50 years ago, also could be useful for thinking about redundancy. unfortunately, the term is largely discussed in the context of how a complex problem gets solved by simple actors (usually ants or termites, but is now being extended metaphorically to humans on the web). in the most basic terms, redundancy is exactly what underpins stigmergy - a production of similarity that bends the community into a certain field of possibilities, perceiving traces of previous work stimulates redundant work. the “new” is always extending or elaborating previous work done by the community, but interestingly it’s never described as progress, just adaptation. the whole point of stigmergy is to introduce a mechanism for externalizing memory (out of the individual, into the landscape). olga’s post on spaces made me think of this.
i’ve been looking for some cybernetics essays also to post, but having trouble finding any. it seems like heinz von foerster’s self-organization or second-order cybernetics, or gordon pask’s conversation theory, or even biosemiotics (from jakob von uexkull’s umwelt, to sebeok’s zoosemiotics, to biosemiotics, writings which are generally not so translated into english yet) could bring something to redundancy through their ways of theorizing agency, shared resources, communication, and identity.
(olga, could you elaborate on the flaws of the distribution of the sensible because i have a hard enough time understanding it)
November 2nd, 2007 at 8:58 am
sean, they way you’ve described stigmergy is very much in line with how i understand redundancy within cultural production, in the way “progress” is not defined by new individual developments but by adaptations of the already existing by a multiplicity doing similar work towards a common goal. is there any text that elaborates on this some more.
interesting you should bring up cybernetics. we used a quote by heinz von foerster in the workshop as an example of looking at redundancy: ”Please, please never say: ’That’s boring, i’m already familiar with that.’ That is the greatest mistake! Always say: ’I have no idea, i’d like to experience that again.’” (my translation). but i’ve been having the same trouble finding good texts which could help the discussion on redundancy.
olga, i think your reference to ranciere and the notion of “SPACE, within which something not only gets distributed, shared, copied, or reproduced, but also becomes a reason for something else” directly applies to what “making room for redundancy” attempts to describe and achieve. that something else could be what sean has described as stigmergy or redundancy.
to continue with referencing others in an attempt to further define redundancy in the context of the project here’s a quote by bruno latour:
“What could critique do if it could be associated with more, not with less, with multiplication, not subtraction? (…) generating more ideas than we have ever received, inheriting from a prestigious critical tradition. (…) This would require that all entities, including computers, cease to be objects defined simply by their inputs and outputs and become again things, mediating, assembling, gathering many more folds (…).
this could be understood as a working method.