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The Australian experimental film/video scene was to be my subject. On
the topic, I must confess my limitations as a commentator. As my method
of research is a combination of introspection and empathetic examination
of the random object that comes my desultory way, it would be careless of
me to assert that my impressions are conclusions backed by hard evidence
and presumptuous to expect future evidence to corroborate them. I have abstained
from the scientific method. One must be honest about these things. Now,
however, as I review my notes, I am niggled by a more poignant doubt: Could
it be that the scene which I thought I was observing is entirely the projection
- the fluttering mirage - of the act of observing? That no scene exists?
Could my impressions, in fact, be fictional? Having organised my impressions
of what I thought was the scene, I now find myself in the position of having
to deny the reality of what my notes describe. Oscar Wilde once said that
Japan was an entirely imaginary country. Barthes more or less said the same
about the country named 'Japan' in his book. I must say the same of the
'Australian' scene described in the following paragraphs. If the 'Australia'
described in part by me is non-existent, why give it that name, you indignantly
ask? Faithful reader, mon semblable, as you proceed, the discrepancy between
the diminutive, invented geography and the real one will become obvious;
calling it 'the Australian scene' will be harmless and even charming-in
the way, for instance, a very tall teenager might be called 'Shorty'. In
my case, I have called the fictive place 'Australia' hoping that some of
the glamour of the reality will rub off.
The impressions I have of the 'scene' seem naturally to focus on the features
of certain character-types. These character-types are not mutually exclusive.
They cannot be, since I arrived at this taxonomy partly through reflecting
on certain of my own dispositions. The members of my imaginary scene may
be, accordingly, one or more of the types. However, if two or more co-exist
in one breast, they may not sit altogether comfortably. The character-types
are: the long-distance connoisseur; the beachcomber; the gatekeeper; the
artist as girl or boy; the applicant; the prize-winner. Some might suggest
that the 'Australian' scene is dominated by them. I want you, please, to
resist, to banish ruthlessly from your mind the temptation to think this.
Not only is this claim false, it also strikes a note of joykilling realism,
the note which I precisely hope to avoid. No, the scene is not 'dominated'
by these types, it is composed entirely of these types. As I said, the world
I describe is fictive. These character-types lead to each other, they are
interconnected. Let me start however with the long-distance connoisseur,
because among these types, he (or she, I don't think there will be objections
to my use of the masculine as the gender non-specific) is the only one who
has a certain nobility.
The connoisseur: He is a collector of information about the culture of the
metropolis, a place which is, by definition, somewhere else. The metropolis
must be elsewhere, must be overseas, because the information he possesses
would lose its mystery if the metropolis did not keep a constant distance
from him and his milieu. Since it does (the information he collects would
not otherwise be so redolent), his knowledge of the metropolis - of its
avant garde, its minor video-artists, its convoluted artistic sects - can
be acquired only by someone with faith and saintly persistence, with a quixotic
nobility of character. The suburbanites, they (always legion) who are outside
the scene, are those from whom the connoisseur must above all set himself
apart. His awareness that the suburbanites are ignorant, defiantly ignorant,
of the knowledge to which he is devoted is the loneliness of the long-distance
connoisseur. He is someone with a beautiful secret. Within the scene, he
has his admirers, who are beachcombers. Note that the connoisseur may collect
facts or theories. In relation to theory, he is engaged in the endless task
of commentary or interpretation. He cannot criticise on his own initiative
or he would devalue the source of his self esteem. When he does criticise,
it is to follow the lead of the metropolitan star to which he has hitched
his wagon.
His setting, or stage-direction: How did his self esteem become dependent
on a relation to a distant centre? To answer this question, we must refer
to characteristics of the scene which underlie the existence of the other
character-types. The scene already, before the connoisseur's entry, was
composed of consumers of artistic products originating overseas, many of
these consumers believing themselves to be members of a culture other than
the one around them. It need not matter that the art they receive is the
response to conditions which are not theirs, having come to believe otherwise
by living them vicariously in consumption. The semi-colonial intellectual
posture is one important property of the scene, a matter, though, not of
cringing, but of false consciousness. The scene has this second property:
it has inherited, from the suburbanites, an admirable egalitarianism. This
egalitarianism, however, has a troublesome feature, the tendency to confuse
equality with similarity, a feature not particularly wicked as things go
(or when kept within certain well defined limits). But because of this feature,
egalitarianism has had more ambivalent effects on the scene than on suburbia.
It has meant that one cannot be too different in one's works or one's ideas.
The members of my imaginary place have acquired a certain anxiety about
being different because of the pressure of their inherited egalitarianism.
This has meant, if not an ambivalence to art, an ambivalence to modern art.
This ambivalence is dissolved if significant innovation-in practice or theory-
always comes from outside, from the overseas centre. The contemporaneous
is defined elsewhere. (Hence, the many films produced in the scene where
the literal or allegorical parental home in suburbia is peopled by medieval
grotesques, by gothic characters.)1 The task is to learn and conform to
the external contemporaneous. The belief that the art thereby produced is
modern is an aspect of the semi-colonial consciousness which is the first-mentioned
property of the scene.
When the setting has these two major characteristics, the long-distance
connoisseur can play his quasi-aristocratic part. In him, these two characteristics
are epitomised in a state of being. He is the knight of an infinite anxiety,
which I shall call the anxiety of not being influenced, if I may be allowed
to amend Harold Bloom. Though bear in mind that influence must always come
from elsewhere. When the connoisseur acts the critic, there is a fact (or
fiction) about him that is typical. While he is intensely appreciative of
significant innovation in the art from the ostensible metropolis, he is
unable to recognise difference at home unless it conforms to difference
certified elsewhere. So much for the long-distance connoisseur Having spent
all this time on him, the description of the other character-types will
be straightforward, since the same pre-conditions apply.
The beachcomber: The beachcomber is a less noble, but perhaps less melancholy
figure. He collects fragments, scraps, driftwood on the beach. His emblem
is the extract, the quote-that thing often found at the head of journal
articles or catalogue essays in the scene, giving them the air of authority.
He lacks the passion of the connoisseur, and is sometimes found admiring
the latter, Sancho Panza to Don Quixote, but like Sancho Panza he can show
a sense of humour about himself which the knight of infinite anxiety lacks.
However, without the connoisseur's persistence, he has not studied the primary
references, he has not drunk deep at the source. The beachcomber is happy
wandering, picking over the dunes. Fond of the company of other beachcombers,
he is the mainstay of egalitarianism, but also of the confusion between
equality and similarity. He is therefore ambivalent toward the game of art,
preferring that what he and others do be thought of as in the manner of
a hobby. (The connoisseur is in contrast wary of others like himself, who
are rivals.) However, there are beachcombers who do not know that they have
not drunk deep, who believe they have discovered all that needs to be known.
Thus, the beachcomber may believe himself to be a knight. But it takes neurosis
to suffer from the anxiety of not being influenced, and the deluded scavenger
of the dunes is all too healthily well-adapted to his environment.
The beachcomber is he who in his art-in this case, films, videotapes, performances,
installations -assembles the bits, forms, 'ideas' he has picked up in the
sand. In joining these fragments he has not attempted to answer why his
experience of the coast is as it is, and why it is his experience, not someone
else's. His modus operandi precludes exhibiting in his work the distinctiveness
of his own life (which would mean changing character-type). The beachcomber
fails to give value to his experience, if value resides in perceived difference.
The artist as boy or girl: The absence of a sense of history is a requirement
of membership in the scene, what I shall call youth. This characteristic
may seem a corollary to coastal scavenging, but it is, after all, not impossible
for the beachcomber to want to place himself in a history and conjure one
from bits and pieces. The boy or girl, however, sees no necessity in having
a sense of history, in determining how far his work has gone in relation
to past works. (The artistic past, of course, is not organised once and
for all, and depending on the path the viewer has taken, will be composed
into a backward perspective with salient trees, hillocks and ruins.) The
youth does not, in fact, possess enough history to provide evidence for
his making the assertion, "Look, this sand castle is like none before
mine. It is I who live in it." Because anything beyond the recent past
is the unknown, like a blank space on a map, he will become a victim of
fashion when he seeks to be contemporaneous, taking to be new what has merely
enjoyed recent publicity. In their shallow sense of the past, boy and girl
artists resemble non literate tribesmen who remember to the third or fourth
generation back, but attribute beyond it a mythological age (shifting forward
with every generation). The youth, however, is a boy or girl not only in
fact but also in principle: he not only does not know, he sees no need to
know. Hence, all works he becomes acquainted with come to belong indiscriminately
to the present, without historical order or evaluation. What is novel to
other boys and girls is his concern. It is his self-imposed task to raise
his plastic sword against all that he feels is adult, school teacherish,
daggy. Needless to say, an artist's grasp of the artistic history of his
medium embodies his comprehension of the history of his society.
The film/art school generational cycle of ideas assimilated and rehashed,
experiments turned into genres, is a manifestation of youth. This cycle
is an
intrinsic-no, not accidental, intrinsic-aspect of the scene.
The appIicant: To the applicant, self-dissatisfaction is foreign. The expression
of self-doubt about the purpose, conception or execution of one's work is
a weakness of character. It is a sure sign to him that someone is a loser.
But the applicant is confident, and exudes confidence. Since to be successful
one must appear successful, each work, screening, or exhibition is intended
by him to augment a curriculum vitae which he assiduously cultivates. It
is untrue, faithful reader, that he makes art for his CV, but it is true
that his art and his CV have an intimate relationship. The CV certifies-
or fondles-his success. But however dense the applicant's resume happens
to be, there is within his confident flesh a kernel of anxiety which comes
from knowing himself to be precisely an applicant. His entire self-esteem
stems from having been given the nod by the powers-that-be and from his
ability to attract it. Since it is given only temporarily, he must perpetually
work for the nod, he must perpetually wait in anxiety to be given fullness
of being by the powers. Let us call this sort of work application. Since
the applicant's self-esteem lies almost entirely in succeeding in application,
his efforts of intelligence gence are directed towards being predictable:
what ever he proposes should match the expectations and standards of the
gods who dispose. A lack of surprise is, thus, one characteristic of his
work. Another is an absence of change in his oeuvre, an absence which, if
recognisably his, is a signature. This second characteristic results from
the fact that in application one cannot afford to express self-doubt. The
winner, therefore, as opposed to the loser, avoids all expression of self-doubt
by purging it from his mind. Since any significant departure in his work
would seem to betray self-doubt, putting into question his earlier work
and endangering his confidence, he can not afford to significantly change
himself. He can not afford self-examination.
The applicant is never a genuine romantic.
The prizewinner is a successful applicant.
The gatekeeper: Gatekeeping occurs whenever there is a necessity to supervise
the exchange between an outside and an inside. Curators when they are promoting
work to a more general audience are gatekeeping.2 I am interested in my
fictional world, however, not with arts administrative functions, but with
gatekeeping as a model for the artist or critic. The scene I describe has
a technological avant-garde in video. The technical advances they transmit
into the scene are created outside, in the industrial suburbs, perhaps,
but more often in valleys beyond the sea. To be introduced, these technical
innovations have to be transformed into locally acceptable content. Art
in this way is an instance of gatekeeping, since it is not so much the conception
of local content to which the artist devotes himself but rather the mastery
of technical innovations he at best merely tinkers with. The academic critic,
irrigating district plots by channelling ideas from across the border, is
a gatekeeper. He is resembled by the connoisseur engaged in the endless
task of commentary on the source, but there are subtle differences between
the two character-types. The first translates, the second identifies with
the source. The academic critic is not compelled like the connoisseur to
set himself apart from the suburbanites by the nature of his knowledge,
though he wants to ensure a demand within the scene for his kind of translation.
There is no incentive in the academic gatekeeper's position to make his
relation to film or videomaking in the scene more than just incidental.
"Emma Bovary, c'est moi." The connoisseur, the beachcomber, the
youth, the applicant, the gatekeeper, c'est moi. To explore these fictional
characters, I have had to look at certain depths in my own soul. I must
stop making fiction to avoid further incriminating myself. When I began,
I mentioned that the discrepancy between the reality and my artifice would
be self-evident. It will now also have become clear that the pleasure which
the reader has derived from the fiction arises from recognition of this
gap. For myself, these character-types are in the manner of temptations.
The pleasure I derive is in the relief at having resisted them when I have.
It seems, then, that in the interest of pleasure the gap should remain.
Robert Nery has made films and videos including Slab! (with Gabrielle Finnane)
and A Time Sight. He has written criticism, most recenty on Philippine Films
in Cantrills Filmnotes (nos. 71/72). He lives in Sydney.
Notes: 1. The idea of the Australian gothic, and this point about it, is
taken from "The Orphan Complex: Popular Mythologies and Australian
Films in Asia", by Gabrielle Finnane, presented at Austral Constellations,
a conference at the University of Hong Kong in 1994, where various works
of Australian fiction were read. 2. The concept of the gatekeeper is borrowed
from John Clark's "Art and its 'others': recent Australian Asian visual
exchanges", another fictional piece read at the same conference. Its
translation into a model of art-making is my own.
© Robert Nery, 1994
MESH#4 Spring, 1995. MESH film/video/media/art is the journal of Experimenta Media Arts