Part Three

Realism is not something secure and given, something conceptually and technically conservative, an avenue of retreat from the searching questions of the modern, but something radical and risky- to be won precisely, from the conditions of a modernity that has so often been experienced as dissuasion from realism of any kind. The social relations of developed capitalism have given rise to a culture industry whose principle motifs have been distraction and fantasy. It is this condition that debates about a modern realism have striven to resist, and against which it finds its most appropriate measure.116

3.0. Realism and the Popular

Before I move on to discuss my own practice I would like to briefly reiterate some of the central tenants of critical realism. The inherent problem in any attempt to define what can be considered effective realist art and what devices might be best used to produce realist art ultimately stems from trying to translate what originates as an epistemological realism into some sort of realism in art - a link which, as Terry Lovell suggests, 'is at best tenuous.'117 If, as Lukács argues, all art is form of knowledge118 then realist art must be able to distinguish itself from, and go further than, other practices if it is to claim to 'reveal things as they really are'. Not only does it aim to show things as they really are but is fundamentally derived from some theory of the nature of the reality to be shown and the methods which must be used to show it. It can be established that it is in the realm of science that the proper task of knowledge production and validation is achieved, but art may then use this to produce knowledge in different ways. So, as Lovell points out, 'its status of truth as valid knowledge is determined elsewhere than in art, and in the univocal language of science and history rather that the polysemic language of art.'119 The effectivity of any critical realist art will not then be determined by directly mirroring the real but by 'reference to independently acquired knowledge of that to which they refer.'120 As indicated in Part One, this formulation must translate into an art practice which is necessarily unstable and context dependant- therefore the crucial question for contemporary artists attempting to be critically realist is: what is the nature of reality at this point in time and what is the best approach to critically engage with it? There can of course be no prescriptive and timeless formulae which will satisfy these questions. However, I can at least attempt to define the considerations which have informed my own montage practice, and to do so I will briefly continue the discussion of the ideas of Brecht and Benjamin, particularly their notions of popular form and engagement.

As we have already seen at some length, realism for Brecht was

not a purely artistic and formal category, but rather governs the relationship of the work of art to reality itself, characterising a particular stance towards it. The spirit of realism designates an active, curious, experimental, subversive- in a word, scientific attitude to the social institutions and the material world.121

is definition did not stop there- he went on to emphasise both accessibility and aesthetic pleasure as key facets of effective realist practice. For him realism is more than just the correct political line inserted into this or that pre-given form. It embodied the combination of both aesthetic pleasure and the utilisation of popular forms as a means to ensuring the effectively of the work. Of course, these are not inherent properties by which to measure all realist practice against but considerations which might ensure the most effective and accessible realist practice. By attempting to combine both aesthetic pleasure with popular form, Brecht and Benjamin saw a way of both communicating with 'the masses' whilst avoiding the isolation and elitism of the avant-garde. Although by their very nature the most popular forms (advertisements, cinema, television, photography) can be seen to be generally dominated by bourgeois ideology, there was still seen to be a space for a creative practice which represents an interventionist and subversive strategy. Accordingly, to then use these forms to effectively intervene in 'reality' to deliberately alter perception (Brecht's Verfremdung122), the artist must then utilise 'the most complex, modern technology in addressing the widest popular public.'123

What has to be considered here is the different conditions in which Brecht and Benjamin developed these ideas, both in terms of the current nature of popular culture and the relevance of employing the most advanced technological means to create a realist effect in late C20th conditions. Frederic Jameson raises problems with the contemporary application of such a popular concept, namely the 'totalising system' of today's media world which denies access to potentially counter-cultural use by artists124 and points to the system's ability to 'co-opt and to defuse even the most potentially dangerous form of political art by transforming them into cultural commodities.'125 In many ways there is no denying the weight of Jameson's argument and to identify Benjamin's formulations that utilisation of the most contemporary technology 'promises the breakdown of cultural (and ultimately social) hierarchy'126 as an 'exaggerated technological optimism.'127 But any criticism must be weighed up in the context in which he was writing. As we have seen, one of the central tenets of Benjamin's 'Author as Producer' is a transformational approach to the relations of production: utilising the most technically advanced representational technologies as the most suitable vehicle is fundamentally linked to a strategy which centralises an overall change in the relations of production as a whole. Conditions of the time were very much different from our own. While Benjamin was developing these ideas, there existed a large international worker movement, particularly strong in pre-fascist Germany, which had attempted to create its own cultural spaces and institutions and 'was able to present technology as an emancipatory force.'128 Although Benjamin identified the development of both the new image technologies such as film and the popularisation of the techniques of montage as a way of responding to the material changes in modernity, 'with its increasing rapidity and abruptness of life,'129 he cannot be charged with wholesale technological determinism. Benjamin (as well as Brecht) was well aware that although the new technologies may have the potential to represent 'reality' in a appropriate (dialectical) way, their operation within the dominant power structures ensures that their general function tends to be the reverse. We will return to this issue of technology in a moment. The issue of popular form and popular culture is pertinent here if one takes its central role in shaping the sensibilities of the vast majority of the population. Theodor Adorno indicated popular culture's capacity to transform and co-opt the most contemporary and radical techniques of production and, according to Dominic Strinati, he saw it shaping and perpetuating 'a 'regressive' audience, a dependant, passive and servile consuming public.'130 Nowhere is this more evident than in the sphere of advertising, which makes full use of both innovative creative techniques and the most advance digital technologies in order to manufacture artificial desires and 'to deny and suppress true or real needs.'131 Jameson's Marxian formulation that the 'reification of late capitalism- the transformation of human relations into an appearance of a relationship between things- renders society opaque'132 is indeed tellingly revealed through the cultural space of the advertisement. By directly borrowing the mechanisms and techniques of art- particularly that of montage- advertising literally plays against Brecht's notion of 'Verfremdung' by naturalising objects in un-natural contexts 'so that it takes on its meaning from its surroundings.'133 Thus Benjamin's radical potential of montage134 as a means to effecting social critique, where it 'was not a 'style' but a set of techniques and concepts that organised artistic production in the interests of social transformation,'135 could clearly seen to be assimilated. Indeed, as Roberts points out,

the production of interruptive visual effects through the juxtaposition or superimposition of atemporal elements were now common place design moves in advertising and mass culture generally, signifying not so much the link between fragmentation and social critique but between fragmentation and the pleasures of the turn-over of the commodity.136

There is no doubting the negative and socially fragmentary effects of commodity culture as seen through the medium of advertising. But it can also be argued that the persistence and familiarity of montage in these forms facilitates a renewed sense of capacity for popular engagement. Although as Jameson rightly noted earlier that there are severe limits in the expanding media space for 'radical' intervention, it is also true that the flourishing of highly sophisticated codes in advertising has created a highly literate audience capable of engaging with complex montagist work. Timothy Druckrey argues that it is our increasingly media saturated culture, particularly through the development of the television, which has revolutionised perception with 'the end of spatial representation of form, and the origin of a spatial representation that is activated by an affinity with temporality, narrative, and media.'137 It is clear that any contemporary attempt at utilising montage in any realist sense will have to take these considerations into account. But to acknowledge the persistence and appropriation of montage as a popular device does not therefore equal its neutralisation as an effective disruptive technique or mean that its potential as a critical category is exhausted. As Roberts again points out, montage is 'not simply a design-technique but a means of moving into unforeseen spaces created by the intermixing of previously unrelated elements.'138

Before taking this discussion onto an example of my own montage practice I want to briefly return to the issue of productive technology with regard to digital imaging. Here I want to consider its relation to chemical photography and outline why it can be seen to have renewed montage's potential for critical engagement.

 Footnotes

116 Wood, P, 1994 p331

117 Lovell, 1976, p 64

118 'different from science, but sharing the same goal, that of showing things as they really are', Lovell, T, 1980, p 68

119 Lovell, T, ibid. p 91

120 Lovell, T, ibid. p 91

121 Jameson, 1992, p 205

122 Brecht 's notion of 'Verfremdung'- the so-called estrangement effect, that of staging phenomena is way what 'seemed natural and immutable in them is now tangibly revealed to be historical, and thus the object of revolutionary change' Jameson, F, 1992, p 206

123 Jameson, F, 1992, p 208

124 One of Noam Chomsky's central tenets in his books 'Manufacturing Consent' and 'Necessary Illusions' is that built into the structures of bourgeois democracy is some space for counter hegemonic activity,(even if this is for the large part illusionary) to create the notion of democracy. Hence it is possible (in an extremely limited way) to gain access to these channels- witness for example the current controversy of Chris Morris's arguably realist 'Brass Eye ' recently screened on Channel 4.

125 Jameson, F, 1992, p 208

126 Henning, M, in Lister, M, 1995, p 231

127 Strinati, D, 1995, p 85

128 Roberts, J, 1997, p 59

129 Henning, M, in Lister, M, 1995, p 229

130 Strinati, D, 1995, p 64

131 Strinati, D, 1995, p 60

132 Jameson, F, 1992, p 212

133 Williamson, J, 1985, p 69

134 I am not arguing that Benjamin himself held constantly to this position- his notion of montage 'as becoming the basis for political progress' (Roberts, J, Domini p 149) was firmly tied, as I have said, to that of the potential for the transformation of the reader/spectator into a active producer, thus transforming the relation of cultural production.

135 Roberts, J, 1994, p 149

136 Roberts, J ,1994, p 150

137 Druckrey, T, 1994, p 6

138 Roberts, J, 1994, p 151