Becoming-Robot With Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik: Robot (1990) 

Mixed metal with lightbulb 

55 x 12 cm

 shaperomodern.com 

 

I. 

 

Last week, as mentioned in a recent post [1], I paid a visit to the Shapero Gallery on Bond Street, in London's Mayfair, to see the Modern Muse exhibition, featuring works by various twentieth and twenty-first century artists. 

 

Prints by all the usual suspects were included - Picasso, Warhol, Hockney, and (groan) Banksy - but there were also works by artists with whom I'm rather less familiar, such as Nam June Paik, whose lightbulb-headed robot giving a friendly wave hello made me smile at least. 

 

For whilst traditionally a muse is conceived as an inspirational female figure, either mortal or divine, that seems a bit narrow and I think and we should open up the concept to include animals, plants, and even inanimate objects, including machines.

 

After all, we're not ancient Greeks. And surely, like Paik, we can all find inspiration even in a rusty robot assembled from wires and scrap metal. In other words, an automaton might serve as a muse just as easily as Venus rising from the waves - especially if, like Paik, you believe technology has become the body's new membrane of existence.  

 

 

II. 

 

Nam June Paik (1932-2006) was a South Korean artist who is often considered to be the founder of video art. He is also the man who coined the phrase electronic superhighway and foresaw several of the technological innovations (in communications and social media) that would shape the digital age.

 

Originally a classically trained musician, he was pals with John Cage (whom he met whilst studying in West Germany) and became part of the the international avant-garde network of artists and composers known as Fluxus. 

 

Paik moved to NYC in 1964 and it was there he began to experiment with a variety of media, incorporating TVs and video tape recorders into his work. 

 

His infaturation with (often radio-controlled) robots also began around this time, though it wasn't until 1988 that he unveiled the mighty Metrobot [2], followed in 1993 by a number of robot sculptures for the Venice Biennale [3] that emphasised how East and West were now connected via technology.  

 

And then, in 2014-15 a (posthumous) solo exhibition entited Becoming Robot was held in New York at the Asia Society Museum, exploring Paik's understanding of the relationship between technology and society and, more specifically, how technology will impact art, culture, and the human body in the future [4].

 

 

III. 

 

D. H. Lawrence would hate, loathe, and despise Paik's work. 

 

For Lawrence, the key to achieving what the Greeks termed εὐδαιμονία is "remaining inside your own skin, and living inside your own skin, and not pretending you're any bigger than you are" [5]. 

 

Thus, as a reader of Lawrence, I also have reservations when Paik talks about the inadequacy of skin and the need to encase the body in technology so as to better interface with reality. 

 

Interestingly, however, he qualifies his transhumanism by conceding that even the most advanced cyborg requires a strong human element in order to guarantee modesty and safeguard natural life. 

 

And what is modern man's most human aspect - lacking as he does a soul - other than his skin? 

 

What's more, far from being inadequate, the skin has never been so vital and so present within critical and cultural theory as today:

 

"The skin asserts itself  in the erotics of texture, tissue and tegument played out through the work of Roland Barthes; in the concern of Emmanuel Levinas with the exposed skin of the face, as the sign of essential ethical nudity before the other [...] the extraordinary elaborations of the play of bodily surfaces, volumes and membranes in Derrida's concepts of double invagination [...] the concept of the fold in the rethinking of subjective and philosophical depth in the work of Gilles Deleuze; the fascination with the intrigues of the surface in the work of Baudrillard; and the abiding presence of skin in the work of Jean-François Lyotard, from the arresting evocation of the opened out skin of the planar body at the beginning of his Libidinal Economy through to the Levinsian emphasis on the annunciatory powers of skin at moments through The Inhuman. Most strikingly of all [...] there has been the prominence of the skin in the meditations on place, shape and the 'mixed body' of Michel Serres. Across all this work, as ubiquitously in modern experience, the skin insists." [6]   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See 'You Don't Have to Be Yayoi Kusama to Make Pumpkin Art' (25 November 2024): click here. 

 

[2] Metrobot is an electronic public art sculpture designed by Nam June Paik. At the time of its unveiling in 1988, it was his first outdoor sculpture and his largest. Since 2014, it has stood in front of the Contemporary Arts Center in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. 

      The gold-painted aluminum sculpture is 27 feet in height and resembles a box-shaped humanoid robot. It's cartoon-style facial expression (and large red heart) are made from neon tubing behind clear plastic covers. On it's outstretched  left arm is an LED informing the viewer of such things as the time and temperature. On Metrobot's stomach is another display feature, showing full-colour videos. And, finally, a payphone is built into its left leg.

 

[3] La Biennale di Venezia is an international cultural exhibition first organised in 1895 and hosted annually in Venice, Italy, by the Biennale Foundation. It includes events featuring contemporary art, dance, architecture, cinema, and theatre (often in relation to political and social issues). 

 

[4] An eight minute video of the exhibition made by Heinrich Schmidt for Vernissage TV can be found on YouTube: those who are interested are invited to click here.

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 161.

 

[6] Steven Connor, The Book of Skin (Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 9-10. 

      Readers who are interested in the subject of the skin might like to see the post entitled 'Lose This Skin: Thoughts on Theodore Roethke's Epidermal Macabre' (7 August 2018): click here.  

Notes on Patricia MacCormack's Ahuman Manifesto Pt. 2: Chapters 1-2

Cover design by Charlotte Daniels
(Bloomsbury, 2020)

IV.

As Poly Styrene once said: Identity / Is the crisis, can't you see?

And it remains so, even in a world that likes to pretend to be posthuman and fantasises about becoming transhuman. So MacCormack is probably right to start with this question as it whirlpools within contemporary politics and to argue: "It is time for humans to stop being human. All of them." [65]

But that's easier said than done; you can't tell someone who has the flu to just get over it and neither can we just shake off our humanity. What's more, the demand is controversial because there are many who are still waiting for their humanity to be fully recognised and are keen to assert themselves as subjects. As MacCormack notes:

"Identity politics has long been critical of posthuman philosophy's forsaking of identity for metamorphic becomings and transformative post-subjectivity, while posthuman philosophy's many critiques of identity [...] still struggles with how to acknowledge dark histories of oppression without perpetuating the identities to which they were victims." [36]

This conflict, between those who champion identity politics and those who subscribe to poststructuralist philosophy, is a dilemma alright. Though MacCormack claims it's actually a false conflict and to see "no impasse at all" [36]. For we can all move forward (into darkness) and ahumanity as long as we all agree to abandon our anthropocentric conceit and exit the phallo-carnivorous realm of the malzoan. And look! Here's Sistah Vegan to show us the way ...

Ultimately, MacCormack doesn't care about "arguments humans have between themselves" [51] over identity, social justice, or even animal rights; she cares about the "reduction in individual consumption of the nonhuman dead" [51]. If she retains a notion of equality, for example, she acknowledges that it is "as much of a myth as the humanist transcendental subject" [51].   

But better even this myth of equality than structured inequality; hierarchy is always a life-denying form of categorisation that restricts freedom and the potential of the individual to develop. Having said that, MacCormack is contemptuous of the idea that inanimate and inorganic objects might also be accorded a degree of agency; "a tedious inclination in certain areas of posthuman philosophy, where a chair is no different to a cow or a human" [56].

Now, I'm no objected-oriented ontologist, but I'm pretty sure that's an unfair characterisation of their work. Contrary to what MacCormack says, I think those working in this area argue not that all objects are equal, but that they are all equally objects upon a flat ontological field, or what Levi Bryant terms a democracy of objects.

And, as a Nietzschean, I'm very tempted to remind Patricia that being alive is only a very rare and unusual way of being dead and that to discriminate between living beings (cows) and inanimate objects (chairs) is, therefore, a form of prejudice. She'll betray her species (particularly the white male members of such) for the sake of all other organisms, but she'll not go to the wall for objects.

And I can't help seeing that as the point at which her moral vitalism triumphs over her own model of queerness; triumphs over and, indeed, infiltrates: "Queer in my use is [...] about the death of the human in order for the liberation of all life ..." [60] That's one definition, I suppose. And, in as much as queer means rare and unusual, then yes, life is queer - but that surely then includes human life; hasn't she heard that there's nowt so queer as folk?

MacCormack closes her opening chapter with a rather lovely paean to the philosopher and their vulnerability, which, she says, is as crucial as care of the world in its fragility is central to philosophical activism and creativity. The philosopher is also defined by their ever-changing and becoming-other:

"Enhancing or preserving our identities, no matter how minoritarian, may be useful and tactical, but if they are our goal then we are not philosophers. We are anthropocentric humanists ..." [62]

You've got to love sentences like that ...

V.

"This chapter explores ways in which art can be redefined to enhance the ethical nature of all action as expressive, affective, from personal actions to larger-scale activisms." [67]

I have to admit, whenever I hear the word art whilst I don't quickly reach for a gun, I do roll my eyes. Baudrillard was right; at best, all we can do in this era of transaesthetics is act out the comedy of art, just as we keep acting out the comedy of sex after the orgy.

I fear that poor Patricia is going to be disappointed if she pins her hopes on art as something that occupies a "privileged space of knowing/unknowing that separates it from science and philosophy" [69], no matter how she redefines it. I also think she'll ultimately be disappointed by activism - which she believes to be "the most urgently needed action in the world" [69].  

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe the ahuman will encourage new forms of art and activism, with the latter becoming increasingly creative and thus an art in its own right; maybe the two will collapse into a vital symbiosis and engage with power, without object or aim, "ephemerally remaking [and unmaking] the world to cause beneficial territorial shifts" [75].

Maybe. But probably not. And - for the record - I'm appalled to see this described in the religious terms of hope, faith, and belief - what MacCormack calls non-secular intensities. I mean, c'mon ... I can accept an ethics of care, compassion and even grace (defined by Serres as a letting be and a stepping aside), but I'm not about to embrace the virtue of hope - and it's ironic to see MacCormack affirming something that only serves to prolong human existence.

As for faith, MacCormack writes:

"Like hope, which is never explicitly a set hope 'for' something, faith is not a faith 'in' something but rather a faith that there can be a world that does not behave this way forever [... that] there is more than the anthropocene and anthropocentrism." [77-78]

In other words, MacCormack's ahumanism demands trust in the possibility of an alternative future of which we have no knowledge and for which she cannot provide any persuasive arguments or evidence. That's fine for some, but I'm afraid I'd need a bit more than this sketchy promise before pledging myself to her cause and becoming a believer (or even giving up my sausage and egg McMuffin for breakfast).

But perhaps I just lack imagination (a key term for MacCormack), or the necessary courage to dream and "rise up against the anthropocene and its malignant destructive expressions of political violence and apathetic semiocapitalism which deny the materiality of the organisms who suffer" [86] ...

See: Patricia MacCormack, The Ahuman Manifesto, (Bloomsbury, 2020). All page numbers given in the text refer to this work. 

To read part 1 of this post (notes on the preface and introduction), click here.

To read part 3 of this post (notes on chapters 4-6), click here. 

On the Inspiration of Touch

Michelangelo: Detail from Creazione di Adamo (c. 1512) 

What Tommy Dukes refers to as the inspiration of touch is an idea that continues to fascinate and intrigue. For if we must still think of the soul, then let us think of it not as some kind of immortal essence located in a mysterious region of the body, but, rather, as something that exists momentarily in the contacts formed between a body and its external environment.

In other words, the soul is a flash of interchange between objects and not an an intrinsic quality belonging to either. This is illustrated, for example, in Michelangelo's famous fresco, The Creation of Adam (c. 1512) - at least as I interpret it.

For rather than conceive of Adam as a useless lump of clay just waiting to be animated by the all-powerful index finger of God's paternal right hand, I prefer to imagine inspiration is born between the two as entities who unfold into being within a democracy of touch. Unequal as objects perhaps, but equally objects nevertheless upon a flat ontological playing field.

It's often pointed out that, as a matter of fact, the two hands don't actually touch. But that's ok. What counts is the active reaching out of fingertips and that magical space and spark created between them that we might think of as the shimmer of possibility that lies betwixt things and forever beyond the grasp of any single entity.   

And what also counts, as Steven Connor rightly indicates, is the delicacy of the shared touch; it has to have a certain lightness and softeness. People with greedy, heavy hands who believe they must grab life by the throat and tear open the flower bud are essentially soulless. Connor writes:

"Delicate and subtle things have a life of their own, and call, not for grasping or prodding or palpation, but for caress [...] for in the caress, there is an approach or address to another skin capable of sensation, capable of its own experience of the borderline between thought and feeling. To caress an object in the world is to treat it as though it possessed such a sensitive skin."

Arguably, another word for this sensuous, subtle form of touch is tenderness - a term privileged by D. H. Lawrence in his late works and elaborated into a provocative ethic that encapsulates his ideal of blissful bodily interaction that is free from any will to dominance or exploitation. One might hold the other, but, at the same time, one must hold back from holding the other too tightly. 

It is interesting to note how the French philosopher Michel Serres develops this notion of reserve in his work, suggesting that humanity - in the best sense of the word - is defined not by its power to manipulate and destroy, but by its ability to show self-restraint and recognise limits. To exceed limits and to seek to exercise control over others - to refuse either to let them go or let them be - is to fall into a fatal form of ego imperialism (à la Clifford Chatterley).      

See:

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).

D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Steven Connor, The Book of Skin, (Cornell University Press, 2004). Lines quoted are on pp. 262-63. 

 
Michel Serres, The Troubador of Knowledge, trans. Sheila Farier Glaser and William Paulson, (University of Michigan Press, 1997). 

Michel Serres, The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley, (Continuum, 2008). 

Note: to read an afterword to this post that develops the idea of delicacy and problematises Lawrence's notions of touch and tenderness, please click here.