I am reminded that what we “know” from day to day is truly known only through a glass darkly. Despite the digital information revolution and the development of more forms of information delivery than we can shake a stick at, we are no more enlightened by what we read and watch today than we were when life and ideas moved at a slower pace. In fact, we may understand less. If there is an art to journalism (and I do believe there is) it is in probing more deeply into the stories and “facts” made available to us through live feeds, blogs, cell phones, digital images and audio recordings; then turning that informative into a coherent whole that we can use for better decision making and action. Information, without thoughtful interpretation, is worse than no information at all. We might as well get our news over our neighbor’s backyard fence.
Example: Last year, I sat in my living room and watched the unfolding spectacle of the Beijing Olympics. It was staged in the recently built architectural marvel nicknamed “The Bird’s Nest.” The stadium, one of many new buildings that had sprung up around Beijing, was a clarion “O” woven into a worldwide “Oh!” expressed by nations around the world as they, too, watched in amazement. On that opening night, ordinary Chinese citizens transformed themselves into human pixels to create giant moving images and light shows in the service of their triumphant state. Each man and woman suppressed their individuality to create a perfect expression of national optimism.
The Olympics’ opening night extravaganza was an expression of China’s determination to be recognized not only as a great economic (and military) force, but also as a more legitimate and humane version of its former self. Tienanmen Square was in the past. Current human rights violations were tucked out of camera range (and news agencies didn’t push very hard to find out more) as a Chinese-American choreographer and his troupe of dancers transformed themselves into beautiful calligraphic figures swirling across a human scroll of parchment.
I was mesmerized. I think most of us were mesmerized. The news broadcasters were mesmerized. Yet we knew something wasn’t right. Reports were coming in of would-be protesters being jailed, even though protest areas had been set aside for them. News stories were circulating about the wholesale displacement and relocation of Beijing’s poorest citizens. Other stories reported on China’s embarrassing pollution problem, or on the disturbing reports of the Sichuan earthquake and the children who died in the country’s poorly built schools. But how to resist the spectacular imagery masquerading as news! The images were everywhere! In the newspapers, on the internet, on TV. Everywhere I looked there were news reports on China’s revolutionary skyline and its continuing economic rise. There was something frightening about it all: out with those lowly and ancient hutongs and up with those spectacular high-rise buildings!
Yet even as the world watched China’s opening salute to the world, its economy was decelerating. Barely a month after the Olympics closed in Beijing, it was experiencing a significant economic slowdown. Building projects were languishing. Unemployment was up. In November of 2008, USA Today reported: “Job cuts, factory closures, unpaid export shipments — stalling worldwide demand for products made-in-China is driving home a new economic reality for businesses that until recently were struggling to keep up with soaring exports. China’s economy is still growing at an enviable rate: It expanded 9 percent in the quarter through September. But that was the slowest in 5 years and down from 11.9 percent last year. Forecasts for next year range as low as 7.5 percent. ‘The Golden Years have shuddered to a dramatic halt and much tougher times are upon us,’ Stephen Green, economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai says, pointing to slowing exports and investment.”
And just three days ago, on January 13th of 2009, BBC News reported that the World Economic Forum (WEF) is warning “a severe economic slowdown in China is one of the biggest risks faced by the world this year….” Wow! Where will all those architectural firms go now? And where was the integrated and timely reporting we needed to see the full picture, not just the scatter-shot images of China’s Olympics spectacular exploding across a digitally retouched skyline?
Perhaps the most complete status reports on China will be coming from its artists (though some say China’s current crop play too nicely with the government.) Check out Liu Bolin, who depicts Chinese citizens as barely visible ghosts against China’s national flag. I think the implications speak to both the economic and social realities.
>Image (above): ‘camoflague 46’ & ‘camoflague 26’ , by Liu Bolin
bordertalksblog.com 
Robin, to illustrate your point: I needed your interpretation of the visual information of ‘camoflague 46’ and ‘camoflague 26’ to see them as something more than design utilizing iconic figures.
Managing the communications media assault is for me the more pressing undertaking, drawing new lines as more and more sand appears.
This, part of a more general resistance–and the lure is powerful–to surrender to the agendas of information transmitting technologies.
A landline but not a cell. A computer but not a Blackberry. To older friends no longer living in New York, a letter, never an e-mail.
This far and no farther.
it doesnt matter if you subscribe to the tsunami of info or not because it is relentless and omnipotent.
you do not count.
on one side there is the sense of the continuity of civilization.
some sense cultural literacy. on the other side you have
a generation of ‘gamers’ who relish a violent and/or ‘second life’.
than you have the blossoming of contemporary chinese art.
the ‘other’ with a an overwhelming virulence.
in a sense one must make an attempt to reconcile the madness of civilization. the brutal cleansing of traditional cultures, the fraud of capitalism, and the sobering
reality of a worldwide economic and spiritual depression.
i like the fact that i have to accept the information
deluge as something to actively engage. this madness this
spiraling maelstrom called the information age. if we can
not address and control the sensory overload in our daily lives than we are helpless amoebas.
i would argue that one must train the mind to filter the onslaught. i really like the humans blending into madarin script. its kinda like a computer generated image but not
really. what is the difference if it is a digital image or a traditional oil painting. what matters is the work of art to
penetrate your senses. for the art to reach your perception,
to pierce yur consciousness.
its like throwing 800 billion dollars into the bank shrks mouths and not addressing the reality of a crippled empire.
an empire that forces the peons to foot the bill. we are all
just blending into the nyt times spread sheet.
reality is truly a sham all the more reason to navigate thru.
Esteban,
Of course it matters whether or not I subscribe. My purpose is not to vanquish the tsunami. Rather, my purpose is not to surrender control of my focus, to own my decision-making, to resist corporate manipulation in its many forms and guises and still live in 21st century America.
The tsunami is out there and I engage with it in that I manage it; to the extent that I determine to remain conscious of its power, its influence, and the precise nature of the bargain one enters into in ‘subscribing.’ That consciousness is what prompts the decision to resist but not to withdraw.
This far and no farther. Selective engagement, not surrender.
senor,
humanity cannot vanquish nature. the crushing
the waves of information.
of course its always a question of free will.
it matters to you what you do when you exercise your
free will. to subscribe or not.
my arguement is one of assessing the uncomfortable
predicament of being visually literate and what to do
with this unasked for bombardment.
and after gaining a reasonable assessment of this
world where the landscape seems to be getting more
and more dire environmental damage and as well
as visual pollution. how does one adapt and remain
mentally and physically healthy?
i do not have any answers but i am actively engaging my
faculties to survive as an observer of the machinations of
empire.
Esteban,
You appear to say it’s naive even to think resistance is possible when the barrage is so ferocious. I will grant there’s a price to be paid for not quite knowing what a BlackBerry can do but having seen clearly what its cultural impact is.
I don’t actively subscribe to a diet of brands and products, tangible or intellectual–at least to the extent I can avoid that and still live in a social order, vote, and pay my taxes–all the while bombarded by the incessant appeals of a culture whose most exalted acts are shopping and dining.
The task, as I see it, is to remain alert and profoundly skeptical, giving the messengers as few avenues into your consciousness as you reasonably can. The price (and, as it turns out, the reward) is a measure of cultural detachment that renders you mute in certain conversations.
This far and no farther.
An addendum to the last post:
There is another way I have thought about this question–one that has its origin in Jewish religious ritual.
At the close of the Sabbath, in a ritual called Havdalah, we praise the God who makes distinctions between things, most especially between the holy 26 hours of the Sabbath and the profane time we re-enter at the close of the Shabbat.
For the record, I believe that time is time and that we assign it whatever significance we choose, in whatever blocks or configurations we choose, with no necessary relation to whatever ideas we have or don’t have about the supernatural.
That said, I have found Havdalah personally valuable for–in very broad terms– its insistence that things are not their opposite; that all things are not of equal value or import; that, in the case of the Sabbath, a day of rest is not a day of work.
Inserted into the daily life of America, the Sabbath is a radical idea, God or no God, because it insists, “This far and no farther.” There are areas of my life that you are foreclosed from invading.
i agree with you in principle.
its just we phrase stuff differently.
my life is perpetual resistance.
maybe i will post something about the inadequacy of
language.
that is what fascinates me about art, what communicates
through the dissonance.
Esteban,
I look forward to your words on the inadequacy of words.
Today, the poet who read at Obama’s inauguration used a line,
something like,
. . . people speaking with their fathers on their tongues . . .
that was satisfying in terms of the poem’s own internal “needs.”
But the line was satisfying in another way. It enlarged the idea of what language and speech are, beyond the conventional conception of the two as conveyers of meaning. It asserted that their sounds are cultural inheritance and cultural communication as well.
But you’re right. Words are inadequate to certain purposes.
I think of my own ham-fisted attempts to communicate in print how important it was for me to have a certain orangey-red in my life–via a gouache done by a painter and graphic artist friend who is also a neighbor.
I had to have that work in my dining room, where I would see it every day (and where it now hangs). I dreamed about that gouache, but I could not talk or write about it. I still can’t, beyond this simple narrative.
Dan, I like your thought about the voice, in and of itself, being significant/meaningful outside of language. Much of my canvas paintings have had to do with the pure release/exhale/cry/pouring forth that expresses without language.
Culture is constructed as much by the sounds that it produces and listens to (the two may not be the same thing) as by the images and words it sees and reads. Which is why, recently, I’ve become interested in recording audio environments (both built and nature).
I’ve recorded the audio environments in several diners on Staten Island, and I’ve done a couple of recordings at Snug Harbor. I want to do more.
The interesting thing is this: when you listen to your environment, whatever it may be, word communication ceases. Words and sentences become just some of many sounds within an accidental composition of audio events.
When I’m recording, I feel very calm inside, very centered. It feels like meditation, except you are tuning in to what is around you. Despite that, you locate yourself within that, hence, you hear what is inside you as well.