3.1. Digital Montage and Contemporary Practice

Michelle Henning has observed that

it has often been claimed that the new digital imaging technologies will precipitate radical changes in perception, in consciousness, and ultimately in society. Not only will we never see the world in the same way again, it will never be the same again. Commentary on digital technology appears dominated by utopian and dystopian prophecy.139

The pervasive view that we are entering a new phase of representation through the advent of these new technologies is clear, and that, despite all the hype about these developments, the cultural role of chemical based photography is in irreversible decline. But to acknowledge this is not to say we are now entering a whole 'new world' constructed out of images which have irredeemably lost any connection to reality140 because of their digital and therefore abstract nature. As Roberts again suggests, these technologies 'do not transform cultural relations on bloc',141 but instead continues to exist within the same cultural structures of the chemical-based image and its shared cultural modes of perception. It is the way that images are used in our culture that largely determine their meaning and this is not largely determined specifically by the technology which was used to produce it. While we can no longer talk about the analogous 'footprint' (what Roland Barthes called its 'being thereness' and 'indexicality' of the photograph142) in the same way this is does not alter the fact that the generated meaning of an image is culturally specific and is not inherent to the technology of production. If we consider for example how meaning is produced in a certain text we can establish that it does not always operate in a certain fixed way but is variable, depending upon the relationship of the viewer and the text. Thus, as Henning again observes:

it is not possible to categorise one cultural text as inevitable working in this way or that...how an object, image, film, etc stages its relationship to the past, its place in history, is dependant not just on its own qualities or form, but on this encounter.143

The digital image is primarily a cultural object before it is a technical one, referring to representational codes that exist outside of the image. As Martin Lister explains, 'the ambiguously complex meanings of photographs have to understood as the result of technological, cultural, ideological and psychological processes in which indexicality is but one element.'144

William J. Mitchell observes that the digital image now constitutes a new kind of object and can 'yield new forms of understanding, but they can also disturb and disorientate by blurring comfortable boundaries and encourage transgression of rules upon which we come to rely.'145 Digital imaging does allows us to 'yield new forms of understanding' only if we approach it from the premise stated above- the notion that all images and attributed meanings are culturally constructed and are not inherent to the image itself. Lister describes the ''infection' of the stable analogue photographic image by its intrinsically fluid and malleable digital code'146 and cites Kevin Robins when he suggests that 'the new image revolution allows us to see new things and to see in new ways.'147 These new ways of seeing can be articulated in the way that digital images can reveal and lay bare the inherent constructed nature of all photographic meaning by establishing that meaning does not come solely from the image's indexical link to the real world but from the contextualisation and organisation of the material in question.

The qualities of these new imaging technologies that are most pertinent to this enquiry is their suitability for intervention into the construction of meaning, in this case by the means of montage. A medium which, as Mitchell describes, 'privileges fragmentation, indeterminacy, and heterogeneity and that emphasises process and performance'148 can be a seen as an ideal tool for co-option into a contemporary montagist strategy, with its ability to seamlessly recombine and blend photographic fragments in a way which was unthinkable (and impossible) with chemical practices. This is not to fall into a technologically deterministic position- as Lister rightly points out, the digital image is just as capable as hiding its manipulated nature as well as fore-grounding it.149 But it is the premise of this project that the manipulation of images via these new technologies allows a potential intervention in the construction of montage works which can be used to reveal the 'real', to get beyond the surface appearances and reveal things 'as they really are' by a dialectical engagement. It is from this position which I want to discuss my practical approach, one which can be seen to share Kevin Robins view that in considering the differences between different image technologies

we would then consider our image culture in terms of its productive diversity, and we would be concerned with the possibilities ( creative and also technological) for originating 'new' - insightful, open, moving- descriptions of the world.150

3.2: Air & Water

Air &Water is taken from the series 'The Glass' (see appendix 1) which consists of six images and constitute the practical aspect of this research project. The strategy I have adopted in creating these digital montagist works begins with the appropriation of images found in various parts of our immediate culture- magazines, newspapers, books, video, internet and so on. The images are digitised, fed into the computer and then transformed and recombined by making full use of the computer's capacity to seamlessly blend and manipulate the digital information. The aim is to create dynamic montagist work which operates in a dialectical way by orchestrating the image fragments to both generate and yield new meaning.

The main agenda of the work is an exploration of the relationship between the so-called third world and that of the first (or that of the north/south)- a relationship of cultural, political and economic power which is integrally linked to the global economy. It is this which forms the basis from which we relate to and understand what in sociological terms can be described as 'the other'. This relationship permeates all forms of cultural life, including the construction of our own identities- the 'us' verses the 'other'. As David Morley and Kevin Robins point out, 'this supremacy was on the basis of reason embodied in modern science and technology, that Europe had triumphed throughout the world and made itself the universal point of reference.'151 This work explores this 'universal point of reference' through juxtaposing of elements to 'create fissures or interruptions'152 in the dominant forms of representation. The work thus seeks to indicate relations which are hidden behind these domination modes of popular representation by attempting to reclaim the technique of montage as a critical category.

Air & Water seeks to dismantle the imaginary of popular representative forms and get to 'the real'. The elements in Air & Water are: a scanned scallop shell; a C19 Nigerian necklace; a Volkswagen car advertisement; a figure struggling through polluted land. There are two distinct themes operating through Air & Water, one derived directly from the political sphere and the other from a more sociologically developed framework.

'Air and Water 'by Geoff Broadway: from the series The Glass
Digital Montage

The original causal factor for the production of this piece is the on-going role of the Anglo/Dutch multi-national Shell and its role in Nigeria. Its role is seen by many to be responsible for the brutalisation of the Ogani people and the execution by hanging of 13 civil rights workers.153 This piece explores the connection between the effects and relations of a part owned British multi-national who are operating to supply the first world consumer with the cheapest possible oil. The Nigerian necklace is organised to penetrate and absorb the struggling figure in the polluted land at the point of the neck whilst its other end is seen to be tied through the shell. This necklace becomes noose as the Nigerian military state (which receives 90% of its revenue form oil export) becomes the tool of multinational interest. The cracked and polluted land can also be seen to extend past the necklace into the space of the car advertisement, and is seen to extend under the water right up to the shore along which the car is driving. The necklace also penetrates the advertisement, with its shells appearing to feed directly into the water. The Volkswagen advertisement's original function seeks to elevate and celebrate the disconnected experience such travel offers. The text 'Hardly a Sensation' is crucial to the establishment of this operation. It is also this factor which provides the montage with its disruptive charge, facilitating a bleeding out and potential shift as it encounters the other images. This reversal of the function of the advertisement (which Sut Jhally identifies as a process of 'emptying out' of 'real meaning' to a point where 'the real is hidden behind the imaginary'154) allows the operation of the image to take on alternate definitions. The text's function becomes increasingly unstable, resisting the advert's intention and starts to ironically comment not only upon the pervasive and destructive activities of fetterless multinational operations world-wide which are hidden from public view, but also upon the celebration of the highest form of individualism which the free-market promotes where social responsibility is rejected155 in favour of a de-sensitised hedonistic lifestyle. Thus the ultimate striving of western consumer culture towards increased individualisation and the reduction of capitalist relations to that of 'between objects' and with it the invisibility of both the origin of these objects and effects of this material existence has around the world becomes open to contention through this manner of visualisation. To further strengthen this, the organisation of the material serves to refer to the geographical outline of Britain, thus bringing the staging of the 'action' onto a familiar territorial space.

Although the insertion of the work which constitutes The Glass is within the location of the gallery, the material is organised to reach out beyond this space and engage, as stated earlier, with a popularly developed visual sensibility. Of course, there are serious problems with this approach, namely the question of popular accessibility (by which I mean the problems of the limited and specialised function of the gallery environment rather than the accessibility of the work itself). But ultimately this siting has to be a tactical decision. In the current absence of public spaces allowing a critical intervention or any alternative resistive cultural organisation then this is the main option at this point in time. 156 This does not however mean that the work drops its aim for 'non-specialist inclusion'157 - it is my view that the very manner in which the material in The Glass is organised and the knowledge which it is based facilitates its function as a sort of critical realist practice.

Footnotes

 139 Henning, M, in Lister, M, 1995, p 219

140 The Simulacrum of Baudrillard's postmodernism where images and all social interaction have lost their referent to reality being 'reduced to an exchange of signs uprooted in material existence'. Henning, in Lister, M, 1995, p 219

141 Roberts, J, 1997, p 20

142 Barthes, R, 1977

143 Henning, M, in Lister, 1995, p 24

144 Lister, M, in Wells, L, 1997, p 280

145 Mitchell, W, J, 1994, p 223

146 Lister, M, in Wells, L, 1997, p 259

147 Lister, M, ibid. p 287

148 Mitchell, W, 1994, p 8

149 See his discussion of Pedro Meyer's CD-Rom 'I Photograph to Remember', Lister, M, in Wells, L, 1997, p 285

150 Robins, K, in Lister, M, 1995, p 47

151 Morley, M, Robins, K, 1995, p 137

152 Druckrey, T, 1994, p 5

153 'Due to Shell's oil operations in the Niger Delta (Nigeria) , the Ogani people have lost their farmlands, fisheries and livelihood. Following demonstrations against Shell, the Ogoni have been massacred, tortured and gagged by the Nigerian Military. Shell's appalling environmental double standards are to blame for the plight of the Ogoni people and Ken Saro Wiwa's death sentence today.' Paul Horsman, Greenpeace International. Source: One World News Service, 31 October 1995

154 Jhally, S, p 185

155 But even when adverts try to play the 'socially responsibly 'card, such as in the recent Benetton campaign, this can be equally read as privatising social responsibly and projecting consumer purchase as a means to being socially aware. As Henry A. Giroux points out while discussing Benetton's ad campaign, these images 'are stripped of their political responsibilities and reduced to a spectacle of fascination, horror and terror that appears to primarily privatise the viewers response to social events'. Giroux, A, in Becker, C, 1994, p 198

156 Of course there are other options for the dissemination of artworks. Some artists see the development of the internet (the world-wide computer network) as a potential medium which avoids cultural hierarchies and enables wide-spread dissemination of work. While there is obviously potential for the creative use of these spaces it also has to be made clear that these spaces themselves do not exist outside of, or escape from, dominant cultural relations. Indeed, factors of access are also very relevant here, as Jonathan Crary points out: 'the inescapable yet continually evaded truth is that participation in the emerging information, imaging and communications technologies will never ( in the meaningful future) expand beyond a minority of people on this planet' Crary, J, 1994

157 Roberts, J, 1997, p 280