W.J.T. Mitchell In 2005 published a book titled ”What do pictures want?” in which he asked what pictures want. The author has already been known for his ability to create good slogans. At the turn of the 21st century he proclaimed the arrival of another, after ”linguistic” (Richard Rorty) and ”cultural” (Jameson), ”turn” that was supposed to be an attempt to describe the changing world of the humanities. ”Pictorial turn”1 was revealing, as Mitchell wrote, “a picture as a play between visual, apparatus, institutions, discourses, bodies and figurativeness.”2 The question about what pictures want was a result of noticing increasing role of images. Yet one should not consider that only in current times images “want” something from their audience. Those wants have always existed, but more and more technologically developed media made them more importunate.
In my opinion, in the context of Warsaw Media Art Biennale, Mitchell’s question should be asked again in order to think through the role of this particular field of creativity in a situation when art has become one of many fields of visual culture.3 Mitchell’s book uncover many myths related to that term. Among most important are: the conviction that visual culture will contribute to the elimination of the concept of art, it will focus the research of picture only on the visual issues, eradicate history of arts for history of pictures, ”dissolve” the differences between text and picture, visual culture is the embodiment of modern “hegemony of seeing and visual media”, it considers culture only as a creation of social processes, or it is comprised of numerous mystifying ”regimes of the seen.”4 In response to the above, the author of ”What do pictures want?” points out eight theses in defense of visual culture. Let’s consider them one by one referring Mitchell’s remarks on media art. Mitchell writes that visual culture encourages reflection on differences between art and not-art. Media do not produce a generalized message. Mitchell’s argument works in two directions, it deprives of hope those who wanted visual culture to level the boarder of high and low culture. Yet, despite the fact that popular culture is attacking, art is still a tool of evaluating or criticizing visual culture. One cannot deceive ourselves the visual will dominate what is invisible, missed or unnoticed, experienced with sight and other senses. In fact, for visual culture dialectics of the visible and invisible, noticed and experienced with hearing, sense of smell and touch, is the most important. Visual culture brings the considerations in the field of arts to everyday habits and processes of seeing and showing, and all that is a part of our daily existence can become an art subject. Also, visual culture, questioning the boarders of disciplines and materials, makes artists use mixed media, because ”there are no visual media”. It can be said that term ”visual” should be treated as metaphorical (what other researches like Mieke Bal or Rosalind Krauss also stress), in case when culture is defined in a too complex way, for example “visual-audio-tactile-notional”. In a way it is questioning of the ”image turn” thesis. We do not live in the epoch of images, but we finally came to terms with existence of images and we do not need any iconoclasm to freely criticize. The last myth is that visual culture as ”social construction of seeing” radically juxtaposing nature and culture, privileging the last one. For Mitchell it is “Visual construction of social”5 so there is no one above us, no panoptic situation introducing “regimes of the seen”, imposing how we should see, but we ourselves create the picture of social relations and we have the right to criticize and reshape this image. Simply saying it does not have to be we are governed by media. The example of are signs of democratization of culture due to rank-and-file network actions.
We are not dominated by the simplest, the most trivial, the best selling because of visual culture. Pictures do not want to govern us, Mitchell writes. What do they want? What do they desire? In “What do pictures want?” we read: ”Seeing is as important as language when it comes to negotiating social relations and it is irreducible to language, sign, discourse. Pictures want to have equal rights with language, and not to be turned into language. They do not want to become equal to «history of pictures » or get to the status «art history» but they want to be seen as complex individualities taking place of diverse subjects positions and identities”.6
Pictures want dialogue with the audience, they do not want to be a background. They demand our attention, and sometimes – like category of Picture defined by Mitchell as ”offending” (Marek Krajewski suggests the Polish equivalent the adjective „kłopotliwy”), they demand our actions – objection, destruction or sometimes only surprised stop on the run. The most important is we do not treat pictures only as aesthetic ornaments. In case of any sign of desire its existence and strength is in non-fulfillment. So the pictures’ desire is an embodiment of duality of seduction and rejection. ”What pictures want, writes Mitchell, is to change places with the viewer, immobilize or paralyze the viewer, turn him or her in the picture subjected to the sight of picture what we can call the Medusa effect.”7 This immobilization lasts only a moment, the viewer wakes up from his enchantment and now the task of the picture is to keep the viewer for longer and it can be done by offering action – from contemplative dialogue to brutal attack.
Pictures’ desires converge with desires of media art, the field that has various technologies (from the simplest to the most sophisticated devices), they do not want to show what they can, as it happens on every world exhibitions. Media art wants to change the passive audience in „readers” who interpret works through interactive play with objects, becoming the co-authors of objects. It happens because of seeing and feeling, the physical presence versus object and in virtual mediation. Pictures and media ”want us” because they do not exist without our participation. They are only a projector, hanging hard disc or forgotten or only forgotten picture covered with dust.
Here we reach another level of Warsaw Media Art Biennale – festival aimed at confrontation and dialogue of art academies from Poland and Europe. Visual culture without its critical and educational aspect would be brought to the level of TV entertainment in which there is no art practice. Mitchell was fully aware that the visual requires new methods of analysis, so he was a supporter of forming new field of „visual studies”. It would not be a research how visual phenomena use methodology used in linguistics, cultural studies or art history. The goal of visual studies is to create new methodology allowing this field to become independent. We should add that visual studies do not require only theory but need practice, experiencing how pictures act in the reality. We need visual education for this, to not become a victim of “Medusa’s gaze” and not to be afraid to look at pictures. When somebody tells us “pictures are absolutely silent objects with no history to tell, they do not hale any message nor fixed story. They simply say nothing or, in the best case, they just do not say anything,” 8 as it happens to some art historians, we should not believe them. The unnecessary windiness of theory does not cover pictures but thanks to cooperation of the visual, experience and critic’s reflection pictures mean, talk, desire.
Marianna Michałowska
1 See W.J.T.Mitchell, Picture Theory, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994.
2 Ibid., p.16.
3 The notion of visual culture is a subject of metanarration comprising inside arguments and numerous discussions of the representatives. The disputes sometimes had a form of a particular questionnaire prepared by publishers of “October” magazine as “Visual Culture Questionaire”, or a correspondence of such authors as Bryson, Buck-Morss, Elkins, Mitchell, Bal and others in “Journal Of Visual Culture” in 2002-2003. See Visual Culture Questionnaire, Svetlana Alpers; Emily Apter; Carol Armstrong; Susan Buck-Morss; Tom Conley; Jonathan Crary; Thomas Crow; Tom Gunning; Michael Ann Holly; Martin Jay; Thomas Dacosta Kaufmann; Silvia Kolbowski; Sylvia Lavin; Stephen Melville; Helen Molesworth; Keith Moxey; D. N. Rodowick; Geoff Waite; Christopher Wood, „October”, Vol. 77. (Summer, 1996), p. 25-70; and essays in Journal Of Visual Culture, 2002, Vol 1(2), Journal Of Visual Culture, 2003, Vol 2(2). We can add Polish discussion initiated by the Institute of Sociology UAM in Poznan, see. Maciej Frąckowiak, Łukasz Rogowski, Badania nad wizualnością w perspektywie multidyscyplinarnej. Kwestionariusz Kultury Wizualnej, „Kultura i społeczeństwo”, Vol. LIII, 2009 No 4.
4 Ibid., 342-343.
5 Ibid., s.344-345.
6 W.J.T.Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 2005, p.342-343.
7 Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?, p.36.
8 James Elkins, What Do We Want Pictures to Be? Reply to Mieke Bal, “Critical Inquiry” Vol. 22, No.3. (Spring, 1996), p.591, 590-602.
Marianna Michałowska (b. 1970)
Assistant professor at Cultural Studies Institute at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Graduated from Adam Mickiewicz University and Studio of Professional Photography at Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan. Author of critical texts in which she elaborates on media problems. Author of ralizations with photogrpahy and curator of exhibitions. She publishes in periodicals and art magazines such as: “Sztuka i Filozofia”, ”Kultura Wspolczesna”, “Przeglad Kulturoznawczy”, ”Format”, “Kwartalnik Fotografia”.
Author of books: “Niepewność przedstawienia. Od kamery obskury do współczesnej fotografii” [“Uncertainty of representation. From camera obscura to contemporary photography”] (Rabid, Cracow 2004) and “Obraz utajony. Szkice o fotografii i pamięci” [“Secret picture. Sketches on photography and memory”] (gallery and bookshop f5, Cracow 2007).
