Books under light surrounded by darkness, their pages opening and closing like butterflies at rest. Ideas have a flight unto themselves, and the truth of ideas can keep the darkness at bay, certainly. And yet, the exhibition Butterflies: Species at Risk at the Edge of Reason, Robyn Moody’s recent installation at Hamilton Artists, Inc., complicates this simplistic philosophy in a very interesting manner. Suspended and isolated by light, the pages of Moody’s books—chosen from among those works of human understanding which have threatened the legitimacy of religious and secular authorities—flutter like mechanical butterflies at rest, animated by a mechanical process which invokes the paradox of print literacy. An ecosystem of human ideas, with the implication of Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’.
The realization of an authentic self is the principle
challenge for the subject within contemporary (post)modernity. As the critic Paul
Virilio notes, contemporary mass technologies articulate a means of controlling
and defining subjects by imposing a globalized sense of time and environment
informed by a simultaneity which makes obsolete any local analogues. Unlike the
monolithic rigidity of prior systems of control, the proliferation of information
production technologies allows subjects to be interpellated as individuals,
their differences rationalized as ‘personal profiles’ that stimulate modes of
consumption. And yet, the Western philosophical tradition has prided itself on
liberating the individual from hierarchical circumscriptions dictated by social
protocols, into a realm where the modern subject is expected to realize and
satisfy their own needs in society. From this humanistic foundation came the
scientific tradition, in which the authority and legitimacy of ideas derived not
from the place within the social hierarchy from which the idea emerged, but
rather, from empirical data which was freely analysed and experimented upon by any
individual who had the expertise to do so. Scientific progress proved both
threatening and beneficial to the hierarchies of power, as those religious and
secular aristocracies which did not adapt to new ideas found themselves rapidly
displaced by the new merchant and industrial classes whose power came from
exploiting the ideas of the scientific revolution.
While industrial and economic growth have brought wealth to
an increasing number of people, the liberation and comfort which defines their
individuality obscures the collective predictability of individual action as
well as the apocalyptic consequences of collective action. Nietzsche’s
übermensch are not liberated individuals whose enlightenment encourages an
enlightened civilisation, but rather liberated corporations-as-people whose
will is reshaping the entirety of the ‘natural’ world. Certainly, we say to ourselves to retain our frayed confidence in
the aesthetics and philosophy by which humanity has defined itself as the
pinnacle of reason and the irrational alike, a pinnacle which has brought onto
the Earth a global technocratic industrial civilisation fuelled by consumption
and which, for better or, much more likely it seems, for worse, alters the
entirety of the global ecosystem in its image, the fact of design is and must be a human fact. Welcome to the era
of the anthropocene. And so we come back to social conventions and the power of
ideas.
Following Frederic Jameson’s reclamation of Adorno’s
critique of the capacity for self-agency within mass culture, Robin Moody’s
installations often re-articulate the ideas and objects of popular culture into
new processes of expression which critique the dynamics of power and control as
fundamental to contemporary society. In past work, Moody has incorporated
gramophones and player pianos with automated control interfaces of his own
design. Many of these control systems alter spectator conceptions of time and
‘access’ to the information encoded within commercial recordings. Much of
Moody’s work also interrogates the potential of light to realise the manner in
which spectator (audience) processes interact with and alter the piece. Indeed,
this participatory aspect of Moody’s work directly invokes the control society
theorised by Virilio. The audience feels liberated through their participation,
while ignoring the fact that the piece controls audience behaviour by
means of its demand for interaction. This interplay between conscription and
agency guides Moody’s work.
Butterflies: Species
at Risk at the Edge of Reason examines the ways in which ideas float in and
out of popular consciousness, as well as the means by which they are controlled.
For the print culture invoked in Moody’s piece, the objectification of ideas
into mechanically-reproducible objects was precisely the source of their power.
It was as consumable, tradable objects that the brave new ideas of the
enlightenment and the scientific revolution were disseminated among a new
reading public oriented around, and created by, print culture. And it was as
objects that such ideas came to be censored from public consumption by
religious or secular authorities whose power was suddenly under threat—not from
armies of soldiers but from freshly-minted armies of readers.
The artist explores those ideas which have come to define
the modern consciousness as also those which most threaten traditional notions
of power, suggesting that the horror of displacement is foundational to the
beauty of mechanization. And yet, Moody’s fascination with machine processes
interestingly serves to occlude the readability of the texts presented. The
books open, and the books close. Indeed, the use of the book enables the installation
at two levels: language as a centralising agency of power which amplifies the sovereignty of individuals,
and machine automation as an externalisation of human memory. The occlusion of
readability in Moody’s work implies the paradox of modern reason, which hides
and destroys as much as it reveals and creates. As artificial life forms, these
moving books gracefully trace both human achievement and human blindness.
Indeed, like real butterflies, they dare the audience to chase after them in
search of adventure or quietly admire them in restful
contemplation.
Butterflies: Species at Risk at the Edge of Reason opens April 10, 2014 and will be viewable until May 16, 2014.
A digital copy of this printed brochure is available here.
Butterflies: Species at Risk at the Edge of Reason opens April 10, 2014 and will be viewable until May 16, 2014.
A digital copy of this printed brochure is available here.
