<ordure::real-time>
[conference paper presented at Marxism and the Visual Arts Now international conference, April 2002, University College London - version without notes]
‘An author who has carefully thought about the conditions of production today... will never be concerned with the products alone, but always, at the same time, with the means of production. In other words, his [/her] products must possess an organising function besides and before their character as finished works.’ (1992: 98)
Thus, Walter Benjamin in his essay ‘The Author as Producer’, famously recommends that the artist (or cultural producer) intervene in the production process, in order to transform the apparatus. In this paper, I simply ask if this general line of thinking retains relevance for cultural production at this point in time — when activities of production, consumption and circulation operate through complex global networks served by information technologies.
Undoubtedly, the conditions and means of production have changed enormously — although perhaps not so much in the laboratories and mausoleums of contemporary art (notoriously behind the times). It is now commonplace (elsewhere) to construct works that are self-organising or auto-generative — that follow rule-based structures and that unfold in (so-called) ‘real-time’ with a level of complexity. My example demonstrates a dialectical play between order and disorder — and is analogous (or homologous) to the wider structures in which meanings are generated as well as the mechanism (or ‘generative matrix’) that regulates these operations.
<ordure::real-time>
Following Benjamin’s cue, in setting the laboratory in opposition to the finished work of art (its dead-end commodity form if you like), the artist-programmer and machine work in partnership to disrupt tired mythologies of creativity — emphasising that art conforms to formal structures and constraints and that computers are useful for manipulating these formations. Critical work on the nature of digital culture (like the execution of computer code) should remain in progress and be subject to continual upgrade - proposing ‘technical innovation and revolutionary use-value over mere modishness’ (1992: 96).
< material/immaterial subversion >
Benjamin stresses the point that it is simply not enough for artists to demonstrate political commitment however revolutionary it may seem, ‘without at the same time being able to think through in a really revolutionary way the question of their own work, its relationship to the means of production and technique’ (1992: 92)
On the surface, it seems that many contemporary net.artists and/or net.activists operate in this spirit reworking the simplistic separation of theory and activism that the essay opposes — moreover, the separation of ‘theorist’ and ‘activist’ (and we might add ‘artist’) makes no sense in an overall practice of cultural production (that takes account of the cultural aspects of economics and the economic aspects of culture). A number of examples come to mind that appear to demonstrate new forms of ‘immaterial subversion’ in trendy catchphrases and neologisms like: infowar, cyber-terrorism, tactical media, hacktivism, and so on. On closer examination, they tend to repeat the strategies and tactics of an earlier avant-garde (and perhaps the situationists in particular) and/or mirror the activities of the broad anti-corporate movement and interventionist protest actions (again, the situationists are much cited). Perhaps ®TMark (pronounced artmark) are a particularly neat example of this tendency in describing themselves as an anti-corporate corporation in which they mirror the language and form of the media they seek to satirise (and satirise is the right word here: at a recent talk I asked a representative whether they subscribed to any particular political or philosophical trajectory. The reply was rather vague and he argued that they were satirists using ‘tactical embarrassment’ citing their work with the Barbie Liberation Front, The GW Bush campaign and etoy). Through their constitution as a corporation, they sell mutual funds for corporate sabotage and employ a form of limited liability such that there is a certain amount of protection from risk of prosecution. Thus, they effectively use corporatism against itself, by developing a critique from within the system, both using and abusing its powers. However, this relies on simple reversals for the large part (not dialectics as such), and this is arguably not a very effective strategy (even for the situationists). The need for negation is evident but there is a danger of simply making a joke about politics, in far too straightforward a fashion that can easily be recuperated.
There is an important issue here in whether criticism operates most effectively from within or outside the system. Post-Marxists (Deleuze, etc.) criticise dialectics for this reason, as it can only ever operate within the very logic of the system it seeks to criticise. On the other hand, surely this is its strength as it seeks to negate all that is irrational within the system. Is it really possible to operate outside of the system? Zizek comes to mind, making clear the paradox that any critique of ideology is in itself the most obvious case of ideology at work (in Mapping Ideology, 1997: 3). The corporatism of anti-corporatism might, in this way, be seen as a problem unless dialectics is at work. The term anti-capitalism reads more appropriately.
The figure of the artist-programmer (some might say software artist and probably more than one person) appears in a good insider position to be able to interfere with the operations of the system. Hacking would appear to be a perfect example of such a strategy where ‘technical progress is… the basis of […] political progress’ (1992: 95). However, this is a rather imprecise term and we probably need to define which types of hacker are doing exactly what to whom? A hacker might equally be employed by Microsoft as be ‘hacking’ into its mainframe. (This paradox is the case with much ‘immaterial subversion’, as although many of the representatives of ‘The Bureau of Inverse Technology’ remain anonymous it is no surprise many of them are simply working through some kind of guilt for their day jobs).
In Benjamin’s terms, an activity like hacking is not autonomous and must be seem as material rather than immaterial subversion, inserted into the context of lived social relations determined by production relations (1992: 87). Even Hardt and Negri more recently agree that the realm of production is still where ‘social inequalities are clearly revealed and, moreover, where the most effective resistances and alternatives’ arise (2000: xvii). What Benjamin proposes as author-producer, I suggest is usefully recast as artist-programmer to take account of changed conditions. In the context of self-organising or generative systems, this is particularly important as once the initial parameters have been set, the production process appears to be relatively autonomous (in excess of interactivity - or interpassivity). If what is required is a ‘functional transformation’, the work of art appears to transform itself, and when taken to an extreme produces itself (as in the case of generative works that rewrite themselves at the level of code). So what are these conditions in which this kind of production takes place (and producers produce)?
< material/immaterial production >
Capitalism has undergone dramatic transformations, characterised by flexibility, decentralisation and networking. These new formations are the material base for the global economy. The system has become fully flexible and mobile, with unpredictability and complexity as the predominant metaphors for both culture and economics. In contemporary neo-liberal democracies, the so-called flat management system is just the latest fashionable technique for the systematic division of labour, appearing linear and spontaneous but ultimately reinforcing centralised control and systemic totalities (arts organisations replicate this for the most part). This is usually justified by some oblique reference to complexity theory that stops short of an understanding of the dialectical dynamic of decentralisation and centralisation, or disorder and order, within such a model.
The phrase ‘all that is solid melts into air’ has become simply a truism. The very idea of change has paradoxically become stable (or solid rather than melting) and digital technology appears to be the engine for this approach. The system’s inner workings and its contradictory tendencies unfold in every detail of the system, ‘every one of its basic "cells"’ according to Mandel — every pixel perhaps. The laws of motion are subject to inner contradictions at every level of operation, that define the mode of production (the switching between 1’s and 0’s of machine code). Has disorder simply become the new world order? No, it’s not that straightforward or undialectical. To use the operative term, it is far more complex.
With information technology, you might say automation has come of age, and labour is transformed by the need for the required knowledge to operate it, offering new relational patterns in the performing of work. For Marx, even industrial processes rendered workers ‘the living mechanism of manufacture’; what might be thought of as the auto-generative system in embryonic form. This is more fundamentally the case with ‘informational production’ (as Castells calls it), wherein constant networked interaction is required between workers, management and machines. Systems must be networked and integrated in order to process information efficiently in much the same way; through a thoroughly integrated network of computers that link to each other and to mainframes — both arranged in decentralised and centralised working relations. Is it simply that Marx’s view of labour-power is outmoded? Additionally, there has been a general disillusionment with regarding the proletariat as agents of revolutionary change. However, ‘the Proletariat is not what it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it has vanished.’(Hardt & Negri, 2000: 53) If more evidence is considered: of anti-capitalist activities and worker activism in various parts of the world, and a broad definition of the proletariat is retained in describing all those exploited directly or indirectly by the capitalist means of production - then things aren’t so bleak.
Technology has not entirely infiltrated the old economy production. Labour has become, not so much immaterial, as more disposable. Labour is still material: ‘networkers’ work, ‘flextimers’ flex, ‘microserfs’ slave; even in terms of autonomous computer systems, the hardware has been built (in a factory) and the software written probably by a team of worker-programmers (in a laboratory). Clearly, new forms of labour need to be built into the algorithm too. Maurizio Lazzarato’s ‘Immaterial labour’ constitutes itself in forms that are collective, and in terms of the network and flows — no longer confined by the opaque walls of the factory. It is, thus, a ‘mutation of "living labour"’ (and a certain restructuring of the relationship between production and consumption). Industry and capital are not particularly in control of these processes but adapt them all the same for profit (accordingly, new subjectivities of resistance also emerge). To understand this process, you probably need to combine economics with complexity theory (as is the fashion in business studies).
< orderly disorder >
The reference to complex systems reiterates that no part of the system can be falsely separated from its interconnection to the whole system. By analogy, this reaffirms the interconnection of the economy with the social realm — where these realms are governed by the same dialectical laws. The contradictory phrase Orderly Disorder (after N. Katherine Hayles), correlates ideas of complexity with dialectical thinking. Hayles explains that complex systems are not absolutely chaotic (or random) but express a complex structure of order and disorder. Thus systems, even social systems, are not closed but also open to influence and change from external and internal factors. In addition, the concept explains how dynamic systems (like society) are very sensitive to small changes.
So how does change come about? The system expresses unpredictability despite its deterministic character. If this all seems a rather inadequate description, I hope it is clear that I am not so much interested in a precise scientific mapping or explanation of this but its metaphoric potential: in that ‘tiny disturbances can produce exponentially divergent behaviour’ and this has some level of (scientific) verification. Within self-organising or generative systems, disorder may lead to order, and order is encoded into disorder at a fundamental level. There is a necessary politics to the representation of order here.
Within systems and their sub-systems, positive feedback loops might generate the further development of a process to the point of causing a fundamental and unforeseeable change of the existing system. By analogy, one could think of capitalism as one such system that contains the seeds of its own destruction (to paraphrase Marx, and evoking a ‘forkbomb’ as code that eventually crashes the computer). Thus new order might be generated from disorder. According to this logic, at the ‘bifurcation point’ (splitting into two), chance takes hold of determinism, and as a result either disorder or order may be generated. The possibilities are complex, but most definitely not endless nor open-ended. It is possible to draw a parallel between the revolutionary moment and the bifurcation point as the point where dramatic change takes place. This patterning does not stop there for it to operate dialectically, but needs continual improvement so as to not stagnate and resist ‘premature closure and false totalities’. Along these lines of thinking and in general terms, recent critical theory (exemplified by postmodernism) rests on ‘bad science’ and ‘bad history’ according to Sue Owens - and I would add bad politics (for this context). In this way, dialectical thinking continues to challenge the pessimism of much contemporary critical thinking.
So change is built into the system but might be prompted too by those seeking to engage with the rules by which the system is generated. In terms of rule—making (the basis of programming), and adapting Castells’s formulation, there are three characterisations: the rulers (who make the rules in the last resort), the participants (who are involved in rule-making), and the executants (who merely implement rules). One can readily apply these formulations to the production of hardware and software (implicating the figure of the artist-programmer) and identify the subsequent relations of production. In other words, to demonstrate good ‘technique’, the artist-programmer must therefore combine the first and the last, on the behalf of the second (both conceive and implement rules as well as make them open source).
The author-artist must reflect upon their position within the production process like a technician—programmer, demonstrating expertise alongside solidarity. This alliance is necessary to transform the artist-programmer ‘from a supplier of the production apparatus, into an engineer who sees his task in adapting that apparatus’, thus reconciling the means of intellectual production with technical quality and proletarian conflict. My position is that dialectics continues to remain a useful concept and model of change to describe systems that appear to contain the same logic. This approach provides the possibility of change through applied technique — at the point of bifurcation (analogous to revolution). I have simply tried to characterise strategies for acting in the present that take account of things that appear to be out of control. This is equated to the idea that an author should try to take control of social action and meanings through intention, but can never take full control over the eventual meanings and range of possible outcomes.
To intervene in the production process in the spirit of Benjamin, the artist-programmer therefore needs to take account of the generative possibilities of the system itself, in recognition of the transformation of the mode of production into a fully integrated self-regulating machine.