Del individualismo al código como unión

This interactive work seeks to be a digital and visible analogy of reflection on art and participation. In their normal state, spherical particles move autonomously and chaotically, contained in a virtual boundary, representing dispersion and individual effort. When the viewer presses the right mouse button, the work goes into the attraction state. The particles are forced to converge towards a central point, generating a collective union. Upon releasing the mouse, the viewer’s action ceases, and the work enters into an explosion and subsequent return to dispersion. This cycle reflects the dialectic of contemporary art: the need for immediate action and the difficulty of maintaining union, always returning to the individualistic gesture. The code becomes the law that governs behavior, where interaction is the key to revealing the political nature of the system.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

Since Mauri told us about that thesis defense that was almost worthy of being a scene in some Monty Python movie, an idea kept bouncing around in my head. In recent times, I think since the 90s, this idea has been generated that the viewer has to “be part” of the work. This need is fed by what we call “Contemporary Art”. César Aira observes that this label, although “perfectly absurd,” describes a crucial phenomenon: its deployment as a “permanent present.” Current art has annulled time, demanding that the experience be immediate. The work demands that the viewer enter it immediately, in the here and now. As technology improves, the artwork becomes less reproducible, forcing “real” presence and interaction. The work is now an event that is lost if it is not experienced. This condition is something typical of modernity. Christiane Fricke points out how technology, especially in the 1990s, focused on “interaction in virtual space”, with installations that challenged the viewer to physically participate and make decisions in an artificial environment. Technology not only facilitated interaction, but canonized it: if the work is software (as Inke Arns suggests), the viewer becomes an indispensable function. I think that the process of making it was greatly devalued, making the most important thing become how the viewer can play with the work. It is at this moment where Marcel Duchamp’s legacy comes into its own. Aira maintains that the contemporary artist is the one who adds a “small fraction of 0.01%” to the existing 99.9%. The founding gesture has already been carried out. The foundations are already laid. What is art? or be an artist? Is there something that makes a work actually a work? If the work cannot be sustained without “discourse about the work,” then the value lies not in the technique or craftsmanship that was required, but in the minimal conceptual variation that the contemporary artist can add. The problem, then, is not only the viewer, but that the artist, feeling forced to operate in that remaining 0.01%, seems to be wanting to “reinvent the wheel” instead of taking advantage of that immense 99.9% already covered and using it as a firm base to make collective work. Current art operates in that “constellation of provisional and partial exceptionalities” that Aira describes. Each artist insists on his minimal and solitary reinvention, for fear of the anguish of influence, or perhaps because of the pressure of the novelty market. Perhaps the problem is that, in the quest to be the genius that moves within that small margin, one always seeks to reinvent the wheel instead of taking advantage of what already exists. We have been allowed a “never-seen breadth of maneuver,” but we use it to atomize the effort into individual, minimalist gestures, rather than to collaboratively build on the foundation of the grand gestures of the past. The spectator’s action, ironically, becomes the perfect excuse to hide the stillness of the debate in that tiny margin.

Literature

• AIRA, César. (2013, 2016). “Sobre el arte contemporáneo” en Sobre el arte contemporáneo. Buenos Aires: Literatura Random House, pp. 11-56. (DAA: 1:02m)
• FRICKE, Christiane. (1999). “Nuevos Medios”. En “AAVV. Arte de siglo XX. Vol. II. München: Taschen. pp.576-590.
• ARNS, Inke. (2005). “El código como acto de habla performativo”. En Revista Artnodes, Julio de 2005, ISSN 1695-5951