Notes from: Flusser V., Towards a philosophy of Photography, (1983)

III. Apparatus.

Origin: early 17th century: Latin, from apparare ‘make ready for’, from ad- ‘towards’ + parare ‘make ready’.

Apparatus:

• is an object which makes itself ready for something: predatory characteristic.
• informs the object
• simulate human organs
• have resource to science
• people act as function of them
• there are intentions hidden within it
•   it is a toy that simulates thought and is so complex that the person playing with it cannot comprehend it;  What make the camera becoming a game is the program, the software. The apparatus hols  power  over the photographer: it programs his gestures. “A philosophy of photography must reveal the fact that there is no place for human freedom within the area of automated, programmed, and programming apparatuses, to show a way in which it is nevertheless possible to open up a space for freedom.” 
• what the photographer does is to look for information to be realized in a photograph; he tries to find hidden or undiscovered virtualities in the camera program that enables him to find a new information; he is within the camera.

Before the industrial revolution the man was surrounded by tools which worked in function of him; after the industrial revolution the tools that become machine are in the center surrounded by men who works in function of the machine. Therefore we have a new relationship where  man and apparatus form a single form – unit. Indeed Flusser never  separates a writer from the typewriter, a painter from the brush and canvas, or a photographer from the “apparatus.” Ever the phenomenologist, he is unwilling to separate an object from the consciousness that intends it.  He observes the movement — in this case the movement of a photographer around a human subject — as a dynamic interplay between subject and object.  He arrives at the conclusion that photographing is a way philosophising, without language. (http://www.nancyannroth.com/?p=214)

 

IV. GESTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHING

Photographing for Flusser is the gesture that allows to the person to search for undiscovered possibilities within the camera program, to look for images as yet unseen, for informative, improbable images. (p.26). At least he speaks about this kind of photographing.

Photographing : Hunting: the gesture of taking photo is like the gesture of hunting, where the photographer and the camera function a single unit. The gesture aims to find new unseen situations; it is  a post-industrial gesture ( post-ideological and programmed)

While hunting, the photographer moves from one space-time category to another, and he combines the various space- and-time categories while on the move. His hunt is a game of combining the space-time categoreis of teh camera, and what we see when we look at a photograph is precisely the structure of that game, not the structure of the photographer’s cultural condition- at least not immediately. (p.24)

It looks like that the photographer is free to make choices but according to Flusser, that his intention is linked and functions according to the camera’s program: programmed freedom.Within the gesture of taking a photo, the camera does what the photographer wants and s/he does what the camera is programmed to do.

The photographer needs to manipulate and regulate the camera – “conceptual” gesture >linear thinking. He must translate his concept into the camera’s program>photo=image of concepts.

Photographing is

anti-ideological : it search for many different points of view.

programmed action: post- industrial act.

The final decision is required by the photographer who pushes the button.

VII. The reception of Photography

 Today everyone ones a camera and makes pictures. Even if they are built according to complex scientific and technological principles, they are quite easy to use. HE who holds the camera can make  excellent photo without being aware of the inner complexity of the camera and the process occurred after pressing the shutter release.

The distinction between and amateur and true photographer is that the first doesn’t seek to make “new” moves/photos and to produce information that is not seen before ; s/he will prefer using the automatic procedures that the camera offers in order to enjoy making snapshots; s/he produce redundant pictures: photographic mania – eternal reproduction of sameness/similarity- addiction-obsession; s/he is devoured by the camera, and he becomes the camera’s extended automatic shutter release. His behavior is an automatic function of the camera itself. p.42). Production of memory and not of information.

The true photographer is interested in finding new ways of seeing and producing new informative situations.

In the past text explained images. In the post-industrial age happens the opposite: photograph illustrates i.e. newspapers article.

Now is the image that dominates.

 

Notes from: The transformative power of performance, Erica Fisher Lichte.(2008)

Chapter 2.Performativity and Performance.

“Performative”:

• term coined by J.L. Austin> language philosophy (1955): Linguistic utterances serve not only to make statements but they also perform actions.
• Distinction between constative utterances and performative utterances.
• Performative utterrances are self-referential and constitutivel they bring forth the social reality in which they referring to.
• Speech involve transformative power.
• Performative utterances are made under social conditions and they are addressed to a community. They perform a social act..
• Austin made a division in 3 categories of acts: Locutionary- Illocutionary and Perlocutionary acts.
• Characteristic of “performative”: it can succeed or fail based on the particular institutional and social conditions. And it has the ability to destabilize or even collapse binary oppositions. Polarities like subject/object and signifier/signified lose their polarity.
• In performance: self-referential acts that constitute reality and they can transform artist and spectator.
• From Austin to Butler: from speech acts to bodily acts.
• Butler will introduce “performative” in cultural philosophy.( 1988: Performative Acts And gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”. She argues that identity is formed based on bodily acts and instituted through a stylized repetition of acts: performative acts. Performative is:

1. “dramatic”- referring to the process of generating identities, one “does” a body and the materiality of the body emerges out of repetition of gestures and movements: Acts that will define and mark teh body sexually, culturally, ethnically, individually.
2. “non-referential”- they don’t refer to pre-existed conditions; no fixed. “Bodily, performative acts do not express a pre-existed identity but engender identity through these acts (p.27).

• Society imposes these performative acts that constitute gender and identity.
• The conditions for embodiment are set up.
• Both Austin and Butler see the accomplishment of performative acts as ritualized, public performances.
• Performativity results in performance or it manifests itself in the performative nature of acts.

The bodily co-presence between actors and psectators (p.38)

According to M. Herrmann’s demonstration that performance consists of the co-presence of actors and spectators > performance: requires two groups of people: one acting and one observing; to gather at the same time and place for a given shared lifetime.It’s the encounter of actor and observer that creates a performative event. In traditional terms: Actor> acts – Spectator>react/perceive/respond. In this sense performance is determined by self-referential and ever-changing feedback loop. (p.38). Middle of 19th century the visible and audible reactions of the spectators will be limited (dark auditorium, gas lighting etc.). The feedback loop gets controlled and organized. From 1960s and on performance explore more the interaction between actor and spectator – staging strategies- role reversal of actor4s and spectators/ creation of community between them/creation of various modes of mutual contact, proximity, interaction. Spectators will make physically experience of of the performance: audience participation.

ROLE REVERSAL: urges the dynamic and multiple shifts in the relationship subject-object. Schechner: let the people “join the story”. – spectator becomes participant/joins to staged rituals. Schechner gives emphasis to the relationship between equal co-subjects: (democratic model)and sets up an opposition between “play” and “social event”. The complication of such a decision to share responsibility with the audience is that spectator can subjugate the performer/inflict violence/act offensively. Later Schechner apply another model: the pressure and manipulation upon audience. In any case, the role reversal, as Schechner states, increase the insecurity for performance’s outcome. Aesthetic, political and social aspects are interlinked in performance (p.44).

CREATION OF COMMUNITY: aesthetics and socio-political coincide. Communities were formed when groups of people performed ritual collectively. (exaple: Nitsch’s orgy mystery theatre: collective performance of adapted rituals.). Strategies: role reversal and avoiding traditional theatre building/stage but choosing socially integrated locations. For experiencing community there is a shift of role: from spectator to participant to co-player. Fusion of aesthetics and social. The community is based on aesthetic principles but its member experience social reality.(p.55)

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

The performance as event (p.161)

• The work of art is created as a “thing” whose “thingness” never vanishes. It exists as artifact, which remains consistent with itself regardless of the recipient’s presence….the artifact is accessible to different recipients at different times. And the recipient have the possibility to revisit, return to it and extract or discover new information each time, new possibilities and new meanings.
• Since 1960 when performance art emerges  there is a resistance to produce  artworks as marketable artifacts and commodities but replace them with fleeting events unable to buy and restore> ephemerality of the event. The performace’s aesthiticiy is manifested in its nature as event(p.162).

Three elements  constitute the nature of the performance as event, accordinf Fischer.:

1. Autopoiesis and emergence: mutual interaction between actors-spectators that drives the performance. In performance art , the performer  create situations which they expose the artist and  the spectator/situations that can make difficult the  development of the performance. the artist exposes her/himself and others  to an situation where they share responsibility. Not long god-like creators of the work. New image of the artist.
2. Collapse of dichotomies: All performances are self-referential and constitute reality.(p.170). Like art vs reality.
3. Liminality and transformation. rituals are linked to liminal and transitional experiences.

/////////////////////////////

SCHECHNER R., Performance Studies, 2006, p.28

According to Schechner:

Perform can be understood  in relation to: a) Being, b) Doing, c) Showing doing, d) Explaining “showing”.

Performance:

• marks identities, bend time, reshape and adorn the body, tell stories.
• are restored behaviors (physical, verbal or virtual actions that are prepared and rehearsed)
• are performed actions that people train for and rehearse.
• takes place as action, interaction and relation.
• isn’t “in” anything but “between”.
• to treat any object , work, or product “as” performance”{..} means to investigate what the object does, how it interacts with other objects or beings, and how it relates, to other objects or beings.
• Performance exists only as actions, interactions and relationships.

The seven function of performance:

• to entertain
• to make something that is beautiful
• to mark or change indentity
• to make or foster community
• to heal
• to teach, persuade, convince
• to deal with the sacred and/or demonic.

How easy is it today to take a picture? Well very easy.

Last year I have taken thousands of pictures. Pictures of  myself, of him, of her, of friends, of random people in the street, of performances, of houses, of monuments, of streets, of food, of garbage, of kids, of bicycle, of parks , of objects, of nature, of landscapes. Macro, long exposures, with “good” camera, with “bad” camera etc.

Sometimes I feel that while I am hunting a “perfect”, “beautiful” or “good” photo, in the meantime I am loosing what happens during the process. I am wondering how/if I can find a different “sense” to this daily gesture; if there is a way that “photographing” is not an easy activity, based on the purpose make a “good” photo or to document an event or to capture the “right” moment but a process that is more important that then final photo or the apparatus.

Therefore, I would like to make a photo just for you, to print it and send it as a postcard to you from Lincoln (UK) where I currently live – I always loved this traditional old fashion way to communicate through postcards and letters. – No facebook, instagram, twitter, email; Not a photo for consumption and approval but a photo for reflection. I would like this photo to be just something else rather than a “beautiful” photo; a photo that we make together; a photo that has “sense” for both of us; and it’s not so easy.

How?

I ask you to define for me a score by which I will take a photograph for you. I ask that the score be something to challenge me, either physically or mentally, but other than that you have free reign to decide what the parameters of this score should be. By ‘score’, what I mean is set of instructions or list of tasks I should carry-out in the process of creating a photograph for you : this does not have to be in any ‘normally’ recognised ‘form’ such as would be associated with music or dance : it can be a written list, or perhaps an individual graphic notation – anything you feel appropriate to challenge me to interpret. I will print this photo and I will send it to you by post.

////////////////////////////////////////

And I have already 3 tasks to carry out.

Today I spend an afternoon in studio with a beautiful dancer, Soyeon, and with Daz.

Usually the person who decided when something will be captured is the one that holds the camera. You watch through the lenses and you decide which is the “right” moment  to shoot. What happens when it’s your subject to decide when!

Soyen started a dance improvisation and we had agreed that I follow her in the space with my camera but she will be her to give the command “Now” when to shoot. I show so many “right” moments disappearing in front of my focus.

Waiting for the command:

I wanted many times just to press the button but I knew that I couldn’t unless I hear “now”. The first time we tried out after a while I could prevent more or less when she will say “now”. Maybe because I have been on the other side and as dancer I know what can look “interesting” or nice. However both we new that what I was looking and what she was thinking I am looking couldn’t possibly coincide.

“NoW”: photo made in a collaborative way. 

The second time we tried, actually, in a dance improvisation of approximately 15 minutes, she said “now” just twice- in the beginning. My tension was rising as I was waiting a command than never was given. Just once I couldn’t resist and I decided to shoot. I was breaking our contract but the need to take that photograph was more important. A nice photo?Well maybe yes, maybe no. But it was that moment that I felt closer to her. I felt that she was more emotional and vulnerable (my assumption) and then I wanted to evade her space and her privacy. So, I shot her.

Looking but without shooting. Waiting. Tension. Shots never taken.

Later Daz joined and we started a simple score-game.

Three roles:

A director set up a score for both.

A photographer tries to carry out the score.

A performer tries to carry out the score while avoiding to be photographed.

Example:

Trying to make a picture where ears and hands are in the same frame.

Trying to make a picture of Daz’s nose.

A series of studio experiments started today with Luke, Alkistis and Daz joining a session of two hours where we “played” we space, communication, relationships during the photographic process.

Warming up- opening our perception.

Some years ago, I  attended an inspiring workshop with Katrin McPherson, renown  video-dance maker. One of the exercises she gave to us was to work in groups of three in the following roles: One was the mover/dancer, one was the camera-person and one was the camera-operator. We used this task to explore different ways of looking into/at things. The camera-operator had to manipulate the body and posture of the camera-person offering him/her different perspectives of the action occurring in space. The camera -person had to open/close the eyes only by command of the camera-operator…

{……….}

Afterwards we  used a task to make some pictures with Tutu’.

TASK

• Create an image where  Tutu’ (a wooden colorful mouse) and someone else interact with each other.
• Use verbal communication to make understandable what kind of atmosphere/feeling you want to create.
• Take a picture when you feel that the image is how you would like to be.
• Just one shot for each situation/image you create.

While I was reading articles about blind photographers – like Kurt Weston, Bruce Hall, Gerardo Nigenda, Pete Eckert, Evgen Bavcar etc- I started being curious about the things that I don’t see while I take photographs of what I see; What happens when I don’t rely on my sight. A simple thought that came in my mind was to hide a camera on my backpack that I will trigger through a remote control in order to take  rear facing pictures. One front-shot relying on my sight and one back-shot without relying on my eyes.

So first I had to spend some hours to hand/home-make a pack where I will carry my hidden camera. I am not good in handcrafting but something would come out. In the meantime I was thinking of Miroslav Tichý, a photographer who used homemade cameras constructed of cardboard tubes, tin cans and other at-hand materials to take thousand of pictures in his town. Most of the people  were didn’t realize that they were being photographed perhaps because they didn’t realize that the parody of a camera he carried was actually a real camera.  So making a pack to carry my “good” camera would have been easier. Even if it took me more time than I imagined.

Homemade backpack to carry my hidden camera

Secret Camera from (In)visible photographer on Vimeo.

The next step was to set up a task for my self.

– Take two cameras: the “secret camera” and another handy camera

Camera: CANON 400D , and CASIO EXILIM.

– Go out for a walk in town.

Location: Lincoln city. Time: 1hour

– Track your route.

Tracking system: Application on mobile phone: MapMyRun.

– Ask for someone to document your actions.

– While you walk spot what you find “interesting”, stop and take a double picture: One with your handy camera and at the same time (with the remote control) a rear facing photo with the “secret camera”.

###############################################

VIDEO ROUTE #1#

Monks Road – Guildhall Street

On the left: Pictures taken forward facing.

On the right: Pictures taken rear facing (secret camera).

Daz was  taking pictures of me while I was taking pictures.