I love this point about Certeau and the Roman priests – fetiales – who would “perform rites on specific places to set the stage for future action”. It is really an interesting angle for me in terms of a question that is very fundamental to me – action, the role of action, the place of action, and how activity can become an element in the composition of a work. Certeau’s reading of this phenomenon- that the story precedes the action – is huge for me: I think of my narrative city projects being almost like a potential story system that is written, and then sits, awaiting activation by the movement of a body in space (or a body on the network).
I think also that in a huge number of contemporary art practices we find the idea of constructing a platform upon which actual social and political activity can take place, and somehow the fascination is with the nature of it as actual, as something real that bubbles up from the world into the situation and finds a place within the frame.
The other thing that comes to mind here relating to our ongoing discussions and ideas of representation, the real, and media is this nice quotation from Benjamin, on the subject of how film doesn’t show the apparatus of filming. He writes “The equipment-free aspect of reality here becomes the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology”.
Much of Certeau’s work in The Practice of Everyday Life concerns boundaries and spatial organization: like his defining of strategies and tactics, for example. Strategies are the manipulation of power relationships from an institutionalized and delimited place, while tactics are calculated actions that have no boundaries or center: one is centered (strategies), the other (tactics) is not. It’s almost as if one can imagine lines drawn on the ground for many of his concepts. This focus on the demarcation or stepping across of boundaries carries over into his discussion on spatial stories, which is where fas is brought forward.
The fas is part of stories creating a theater of actions, of building a foundation and opening up a space for action through a story. The Roman priests referred to in the text appeared to function as ambassadors that went to a neighboring country’s border and gave a deadline to when war would start if conditions didn’t change. If the time ran out, the fetiales would apparently hurl a spear with blood on it over the border, which would be an official declaration of war.
For my own work, specifically the OutRun project, I don’t see it as creating a story to lay a foundation for future actions. Building a device/artwork can be viewed as a story that lays out actions in the future, but I think it’s more accurate to think of this project as a style of backward action – not a future narrative. It’s all a tangled network of recycled stories, objects, fantasies, realities, and actions, though. Although I think he articulates a lot of foundational concepts that are relevant to DIY practices and tactical media, I haven’t gravitated toward Certeau in my work. I find that The Practice of Everyday Life leans toward text-based and subtle practices, like moving between spaces, creating narratives, or constructing stories.
Recently, I’ve also been rethinking the “avant garde” metaphor within art: of artists being on the front line of change, and of forging a path into the future. Certeau’s concept of fas, fetiales, and creating a theater for future actions has an avant garde resonance to it. Many exceptional pieces of artwork successfully function as antennae into the future and lay a foundation of things to come, but this isn’t the sole role of art. There is also a reflective recycling of the past, of picking up the discarded memories and artifacts of culture – and this backwardness tends to sometimes be underdeveloped in the media arts. Media art doesn’t need to be more cutting-edge: it needs to be more emotional, historical and thoughtful.
And not that driving around in an arcade cabinet is so thoughtful, but it tries to look into the past and short-circuit it with the present. My recent thoughts are in line with what some term as a media archaeological perspective: to look backward and forward at the same time, and pursue them simultaneously. It’s more interesting than trailblazing a path into the future: I think many that seek the leading edge eventually find out that they were just redoing something that had been done before.
