>my interests have tended to focus on the infrastructural ... this focus
>has >seemed to offer me the potential (within my work itself, rather than
>it in the >context of its exhibition, display and communication) to
>counteract the >strategies of the image... I have altered the molecular,
>morphological >condition which allows adhesion to take place.
i'd be interested in hearing more about this from you... i've repeatedly
returned to the infrastructural as a site pregnant with possibilites in
face of certain image strategies... repeatedly returned to, yet never
embraced directly...
to the extent that the infrastructural posesses agency in terms of
movement/mobilization, we are confronted with the temporal, at times the
repetitive. here jordan's thoughts on 'pacing' "...to be aware of
pacings is to be aware of the vectors that initiate and encode
mobilization..." (<documenta X><blast> rhythms; Tue, 1 Jul 1997 15:55:45
-0400 (EDT)) and keller's post on 'metal/corporeal rhythms:...our inability
to use these very ordinary mental faculties to reprogram the world through
our perception of it." (<documenta X><blast> rhythms; Tue, 24 Jun 1997
09:15:20 -0400 (EDT)) could suggest two distinct spring points for an
attempt at articulating some of the terms of the negotiation,
pro-actively... from the repetitive to habit to habitual recognition...
further: to the extent that advertising is an infrastructural component in
televisual feed, we might interrogate a history of ads which 'alter' the
conditions by which their 'adhesion' can take hold (although i must say
that i'm not sure i'd particularly enjoy persuing this myself)... for
instance, take the everready rabit campaign a few years back... we are
confronted with what appears to be an ad for yet another doritto-style
snack-chip. we recognize the structure: sweaty, beefy football lineman in
lockerroom after tough game, munching away on bag of chips; we're just
about to here that dammned slogan "munch all you want, we'll make more..."
and WHAM! here comes the drumbeating rabbit, marching across the bottom of
the screen, the voiceover: everready, still going strong after all these
years (or something like that)... and this is repeated for other genre ads
of the time... now what's interesting is the temporal appropriation that
occurs here. on the one hand we are provoked to recall everready's
previous campaign where two copies of the same product are outfitted with
batteries, one with everready, the other with the competitor, and an
'endurance' test is enacted where everready always outlasts it's
competitor... on the other hand, the time that has elapsed between that
campaign and the present one (a few years) is 'filled' with the idea of
this rabbit continuing along it's (by now) well beaten path... thirdly, and
most significantly, each ad that is subsequently viewed after the one
hijacked by the rabbit is suspect: is this really an ad for such and such,
or is that rabbit gonna come in and bust it all up again... through this
calculated tactic, everready is able to appropriate 'time' which it doesn't
have to pay ABC/NBC/CBS for: mnemonic time; the time that we carry with us,
the luminance of it's image refreshed periodically through the context of
advertising itself, whether or not everready is 'literally' there... a
local insertion affecting a more global consciousness... hardball tactics
now, given margaret morse's alignment of television, the mall and the
freeway, to what degree might tactics deployed within one domain be
transferrable to another? what would be the equivalent of the everready
campaign along the highway? in the mall? it should be noted that the
moment in which everready's tactic is repeated by another ad agency, it's
effectivenes diminishes... thus the necessity for perpetual re-invention, a
condition harder to achieve through built works which traditionally have
longer refresh rates...
and/
department of public works
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documenta X Kassel and http://www.documenta.de 1997
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