Introduction

In this paper, I aim to explore the political and affective potential of contemporary Media Art, particularly the supposedly genuine form of ‘agency’ of media art projects, by means of my artistic project Masculinities (2019/20). Drawing inspiration from a series of disciplines and academic fields such as Image Studies, Affect Theory, Media and Cultural Studies, Sound Studies, and Media Art History, as well as the interconnection of these fields, I seek to develop a knowledge basis that can work as theoretical background and analytical tool to come to terms with artistic practices in the realms of Media Art, and beyond. The paper integrates an analysis of the video installation Masculinities, in which the theoretical relations are gathered in order to support the investigation of some of the (public) outcomes of the piece.

This paper and the project Masculinities were developed in a context of practical proximity with regard to some of the theories and intellectual references they allude to. The topics and bibliographical references were approached on an intellectual and referential level in order to accompany the development of the project. They have later been revisited in order to further support the theoretical reflection on the work. For the sake of synthesis, some theories that were elemental for the development of the project, such as Linguistics and Gender Studies, are not included into this paper. As both the theme of the paper and the artistic project are supposed to take part in the domain of the public sphere, it must be emphasized that the original motivation, from which it emerged, was guided by two different endeavors regarding to the public sphere.  

First, the event and radio show “Rise and Resist: Brazilians against fascism,” which came up in the context of the Brazilian presidential election of 2018 and its prospective societal outcomes in the country. This project has been organized by myself in collaboration with fellow Brazilian artists residing in Weimar, Germany, in November 2018. Second, an individual effort, the presentation “Media Art as a Political Medium,” which has been realized in the scope of the Transmediale Student Forum in Berlin in January 2019.

Masculinities and Affect Theory

Masculinities, the project that will be further discussed throughout this paper, is a 52-minutes 3-channel video installation that explores modern manhood from an intercultural perspective. The video installation consists of presence and remote interviews with 9 men, aged between 19 and 32, and coming from 8 different countries and 4 continents: South Korea, USA, Canada, Sudan, France, Germany, Taiwan, and Brazil. Me, coming from Brazil, I am in an interview with Taiwanese artist Fang Sheng-Chou. The installation has first been exhibited during a self-organized screening at the Bauhaus University Weimar in October 2019, and was later showcased as solo exhibition, titled MASCULINITIES, from January 30 to February 2, 2020 at the exhibition space Marke.6 in Weimar.

The investigation of the affective and political potential of Media Art and the question how Media Art can be explored by means of its agency and its potential to stimulate agency, particularly with regard to the medium of exhibition, is lead by the juxtaposition of different areas of knowledge. As stated by Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth, one of the main premises of ‘affect’ in the realm of Affect Theory is that it “arises in the midst of in-between-ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon.” (1) Following this conception, the capacity of acting and being acted upon concerns first and foremost the body. However, if the body is looked at within the spheres of community, society and interpersonal relationships, the potential of affecting and being affected is not limited to human bodies.

According to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “artists are presenters of affects, the inventors and creators of affects.” (2) In their study, affect is presented as a matter that is preserved in itself and exceeds not only the agency of the artist but also the affections or feelings that may have stimulated the creation of the artwork. In conjunction with percepts, which go beyond any perceptions that might have been involved in the process of production of a piece of art, affects form a so-called “bloc of sensations” that is, following Deleuze and Guattari, preserved with the artwork. Artworks exist for themselves and have their own potential of affecting and creating percepts.

Although this paper is not focused on pursuing a vitalist approach to non-human objects, it does not fail to recognize the affective potential of non-human agents or their inherent ‘thing power’ – a term Jane Bennet employs to describe the objects’ capacity of affecting other bodies and “enhancing or weakening their power.” (3) On the contrary, the understanding of the affective potential of non-human agents is pursued here in order to understand how ‘affect’ can be made productive for Media Art, and how media artistic practices carry their own potential of political agency, that is, of acting upon other bodies and being contextualized within contemporary activist and political practices. Masculinities was born out of the interest to simultaneously explore the aesthetics of Media Art practices and contribute to the re-signification of gender roles, and this by means of conversations on the subject. Acknowledging the processes and opportunities characteristic to the medium of video, the documentary form has been used to create a platform of visibility for non-hegemonic masculinities. The inherent dynamics of ‘listening’ play a constitutive part within this process.  

The interviews were not expected to have specific focuses or outcomes. The performative nature of the interviews rather triggered unexpected aspects of the theme and allowed for gradually understanding the work in progress; the same applies for the feedbacks by the interviewed participants, either on the recorded interviews or the off-camera. To some extent, the affective potential of the artistic work has been disclosed first and foremost by its making, considering the motivation that stimulated its creation – the urgency to discuss new possible forms of masculinity, while also talking about the multi-faceted aspects related to it. Amongst many others themes, the apprehension and reaction of a younger generation of men to feminism and a refrain of demands for new gender roles towards more gender-equal societies; the tangency of cultural aspects for the individual understanding of what it means to be a man for men in different cultures around the world; and the discussion of modern manhood, through an inter-crossing of different cultural backgrounds, within the global and the local. Together, the interviews present a panorama of perceptions on the current state of masculinity by men themselves and they may also provide an outlook to where modern manhood might be heading to, from new generations onwards.

Masculinities aims to interpolate the local with the global, by acknowledging the complexities intrinsic to these themes, their many different framings and the possible contradictions that the work might carry. The project does not pretend to offer a universal insight into the current state of manhood. It rather shows, by focusing on a certain reach of masculinities presented, specific situations and relations, personal histories and individual conceptions of the discussed themes. In so doing, Masculinities attempts to contribute to the discourse on the subject of modern manhood, while staying within the specific framing of the medium.

Visual Activism

In the current atmosphere of political, social, and ecological instability, visual culture has been a means of triggering, inciting and representing a drive for social change. Either by enabling what Peter Weibel calls “Artivism” (4), meaning the interface of art and activism, through an interplay of new media and its role to encourage social activism. Thereby, the personal acts of civic engagement are considered by Weibel  as a genuine form of art, “perhaps the twenty-first century’s first new art form.” (5) Or by incorporating activism by its own means, as with what is called “Visual Activism” by Nicholas Mirzoeff. According to him, visual culture is applied to “create new self-images, new ways to see and be seen, and new ways to see the world.” (6) In this paper, Media Art is understood to be one of the possible practices to enhance the understanding of visual culture at large. The recognition of political agency in its realms is not intended to restrain the potential agency of Media Art projects to the ones that are assumedly intended to contain political agency or act on a certain discussion in the public sphere. The approach is rather associated with the enhancement of visibility, creating new ways of seeing and being, and allowing for new ways of communal living. In the following, this aspiration will be further explored by means of Jacques Rancière’s understanding of “the distribution of the sensible”.

Micro-Politics

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, activism means “the use of direct and noticeable action to achieve a result, usually a political or social one.” (7) Although politics is one of the core elements of this discussion, the aim is not to establish an extensive definition of what is comprehended as ‘political’. In this paper, politics is rather discerned in the context of micro-politics, pursuing the guiding thesis that Media Art is able to carry its own agency, to create affect and to evoke social change. As stated by Lone Bertelsen and Andrew Murphie, “the micro political events of everyday life, for their analysis, and for the modes of living made possible.” (8) The discourse on Media Art is also referred to with consideration of its possibilities and capabilities. However, it must be admitted that a profound outline of what constitutes Media Art is not the aim of this work, considering the wide range of practices Media Art encompasses and the infinite array of societal and political contexts, in which it is created. Trough the analysis of Masculinities, I wish to show one specific practice within a contextualized frame.

Tracing back to Performance and early Interactive Arts, e.g. the series of World Politics Monopoly (1970) by Öyvind Fahlström, the participatory element of many of the contemporary practices of Media Art should not be underestimated, neither their role in influencing the occurrence of current social participation in politics, as explained by Weibel. (9) Within the project Masculinities, participation has also been elementary, not only concerning its technical development, but also with regard to the role of the different interviewees in the constitution of the work, and with regard to the exhibition of the word. Here, the organization and the assembly of the projectors in space were supposed to facilitate the awareness of a shared social experience. This has been inspired by the incorporation of Performance Art within a Video Art practices, drawing on the critique of cinema as unique screening space, as put forth by the pioneers of Expanded Cinema Carolee Schneeman, Malcom Le Grice, VALIE EXPORT, Annabel Nicholson and Gill Eatherley.

Marshall McLuhan recognizes the affective influence of media on its recipients, when he states “that our human senses of which all media are extensions, are also fixed charges on our personal energies, and that they also configure the awareness and experience of each one of us.” (10) The same affective potential applies to the current state of media technology and its influence on the spheres of the private, interpersonal, collective, and the political, not least for embodying these qualities itself. Embodiment, one of the a main characteristics of Media Art practices, be it as extension of Performance Art in connection to technology, interactive installations or the incorporation of media for the creation of hybrid spaces – such as with virtual and augmented reality works – also means the embodiment of images, as discussed by Hans Belting in his essay “Image, Medium, Body.” (11) By means of his differentiation between image, medium and body, and his effort to distill the effect of the medium on a body, and the images that are mediated by it, it is possible to understand the “symbolical energy, which easily lends itself to political use” of the medium, the image it carries, and eventually, its potential affect on a body. According to Belting, the body is more than a passive receiver. (12)

A body is able to actively or intuitively block the contact with images and sound, also denying the contact with the symbolic aspects they carry. In Media Art, the possibility of blocking or opening up to an engagement with a body also influences the affective potential of media, sound and image as well as of the signs and meanings they communicate. This does not mean that the affective influence on an object over oneself can be completely mediated or controlled, even if one has the intention to control the affective potential and the possibilities of engagement or disengagement through the mediation of her or his body and its mechanisms. The engagement one decides to have with a specific work, in return, works towards the process of active co-creation of its meaning.

Agency Beyond Intention

With regard to Walter Benjamin’s visual epistemology, Sigrid Weigel develops a three-stage model for his relation to images: 1. first encounter, 2. latency, and 3. thought-image. The affective potential of thought-images lies beyond immediate comprehension, and in different temporalities and stages of psychological affect or rational comprehension within a specific societal frame. Images such as those mediated by a film, a projection, or by television, can be recalled and incorporated actively in one’s iconological knowledge. (13) For that reason, if one intends to regulate the affection of media and images upon themselves, this cannot be done without the awareness of the limitations of such regulations. The choice of engaging with media is also a choice of engaging with the affective potential that the agency of such an object can have upon oneself. Even if such affect cannot be consciously apprehended at the moment of the first encounter, as pointed out by Weigel:

“It is the time of latency, the time between a flash of insight and conscious reflection, that raises the question of the state of consciousness in which the pictures have an active role. It pertains to the latency of knowledge that for a long time remains unconscious or preconscious before the cultural and historic-theoretical implications of what has been seen are unfolded and configured. One could describe this latency as the work of memory between the exposure and the development of a visible image.” (14)

If the affective potential of an object cannot be completely mediated, the engagement one might have with it, in addition to a level of bodily engagement, is also mediated by the meanings that are embedded in such encounters with the body. As for Media Art, an object can be analyzed either by means of the historical and social context, in which it was created, as well as by its semiosis; “the status of signs in communication, and the subjects involved in that process.” (15)  

Also, by the attribution of meanings through one’s engagement with the piece. However, not without recalling what the creator of an object intended to portray, or what should be seen and heard, and what is relevant for doing so, as understood by John Berger and his presentation of different ‘ways of seeing’  (16). According to him, none of these actions are done without a political context or reason. Following Mieke Bal’s view on the potential of analysis, attribution and “power over” meaning through active engagement with images and art in general, the comprehension of the affective potential of an object and its relation to a body take place in a sort of interconnection between what it carries and communicates, also with regard to its media and how the object has been  appropriated and developed by the creator; in short, its affects and percepts, which go beyond the intention of the artist, as well as the affective potential of the engagement of the body with the object, and of its media upon the body and the object itself. (17)

In early Visual Arts and Film, the affective potential of the body, the consumer or appreciator of the object, was not seen as important to neither the existence of the piece nor its affective potential on other bodies. As for Media Art, however, this affective potential cannot be ignored. In a feedback loop, for which the art object often needs and  active engagement of a body to exist, to manifest itself and to have its affective potential enhanced, the object and the bodies experiencing and engaging with it can be in a constant state of stimulation of affecting and being affected. Often, the object also affects the environment, in which it is situated as well as the bodies inhabiting it, regardless of whether such environment is physical, digital or hybrid. Therefore, I argue that Media Arts carries its own agency, as well as a potential of affecting, and perhaps even empowering further agencies, e.g. of the bodies the artistic work connects with. Potentially, the work contributes to subsequent participation in social co-creation, even if not in the sense of macro-political events. As a counterpoint to passive media consumption, which often diminishes the awareness of the capacity to recognize one’s own agency, Media Art can be appropriated for stimulating political empowerment and to evoke affective potential in the realms of one’s community, regardless of how broad the public reach of such actions may be.

Furthermore, it is crucial to point our the difference between the intention of an artist and the affective power of a piece of art. The affective potential of art takes place in relation to the audience, who experiences it. This also applies for the potential of incorporating ideas into society and the public sphere. As for this point, two aspects are relevant.

The first is the fact that much of what can be apprehended from an artwork, following Mieke Bal, can extrapolate the meaning intended by the artist. (18) This means that a piece may tell the audience – or the artist herself/himself – much more than she or he might have consciously been intending to communicate. This argument is taken into account in scope of the analysis of Masculinities after its completion. Part of the understanding I got of the characteristics of the piece, and how the anticipated discussions changed in the course of the development of the project, took place in the public realm, happened during the exhibition or through the contact with the public, and not least, through my own interpretation of the work. While working with the medium of video installation, much of the effect of the piece on my own body, or the observation of its encounter with the bodies of the visitors of the piece, was only possible after the completion of the work. While part of the work disclosed itself to my comprehension throughout the development, another part could only do so after being exposed to the public sphere. With its own affects and percepts, which also act upon myself as creator of the work, regardless of my intense occupation with the piece before its exhibition.  

In this regard, the analysis of the meanings of a piece also shows that the realization of the affect it has on those, who are affected by it, is not only beyond the capabilities of the artist to preview, manipulate or control, even within the process of creation, but also beyond the affective intentions that could have been considered by her or him. It is possible that the result completely diverges from the original idea, having the opposite attribution of meaning or affect than what could have been intended. Moreover, the interrelation of an object and the body must be recognized. Both carry the power of acting and being acted upon each other, as understood by Bertelsen and Murphie, even if both object and body are essentially neutral in relation to another. (19) Such recognition can be primal, not only for the discussion of the interrelation between the agencies of body and object, in the public context of a media art work, but also on the same basis of accountability on what constitutes our communal life and characterizes the very co-creation and inhabitation in society, amongst bodies with divergent understandings, expectations and visions for communal life. As stressed out by Bertelsen and Murphie:

“How does one go about producing, on a large scale, a desire to create a collective generosity? (…) Not only must I accept this adversity, I must love it (…), seek it out, communicate with it, delve into it, increase it. It must get me out of my narcissism, my bureaucratic blindness, and will restore to me a sense of finitude that all the infantilising subjectivity of the mass media attempt to conceal (…), responsibility emerges from the self in order to pass to the other.” (20)

The second aspect, considering the affective political potential of a work, consists of the intention to be political, or to carry a certain political meaning. Regarding this point, the key concepts comes from Jacques Rancière and his studies on the philosophy of arts and politics –  recognizing the affective political potential of Media Art in society, they are also key to my artistic project. The affective political potential can influence ways of being and seeing, and making visible, as disclosed by Rancière:  “[A]rtistic practices are ways of doing and making that intervene in the general distribution of ways of doing and making as well as in the relationships they maintain to modes of being and forms of visibility.” (21)

The dimensions of visibility in a society, what Rancière calls “the distribution of the sensible”, are the extensions of what is associated as possible for being and doing. Such a distribution, which also consists of different possible arrangements of society, is not static and takes place in a constant process of “redistribution of the sensible,” and consequent rearrangements of modes of being, acting, thinking and seeing the world.

In this sense, the affective potential is indissociable from forms of agency, as possibilities of influencing ways of being and structuring thoughts, actions and social arrangements. The insertion of artistic practices as potential agents in the redistribution of the sensible, then, also encompasses its possibilities of acting upon and affecting the redistribution of the sensible in terms of its potential of acting upon visibility and the arrangement of new ways of living and imagining individual and social life.

However, Rancière states that “politics has its aesthetics, and aesthetics has its politics. But there is no formula for an appropriate correlation.” (22) The differentiation of both regimes of politics Rancière pure forth does not isolate the potential of arts in being political, or acting upon political effects, but it rather makes clear that its intention of being and achieving one’s affective intuition does not necessarily mean being successful in achieving it, or stimulating such affect, as previously discussed. For Rancière, however, it is clear that by acting upon an own domain of the work as art, it carries the potential of acting upon visibility and the consequent distribution of the sensible in society. To some extent, this comprehension liberates the necessity of attributing to a piece the responsibility of acting upon one specific sphere in public life, with an intention of achieving a specific result as means of its production. As pointed out by Rancière: 

“The dream of a suitable political work of art is in fact the dream of disrupting the relationship between the visible, the sayable, and the thinkable without having to use the terms of a message as a vehicle. It is the dream of an art that would transmit meanings in the form of a rupture with the very logic of meaningful situations.” (23)

Bringing the approached objects in accordance, as well as the intellectual references approached for its development, the revision of the project Masculinities is done for means of analyzing its possible subjective outcomes. It has been developed as an investigation of agency and its incorporation within a specific practice, as well as its characteristics, constraints, and motivations. My  analytical approach, which might reserve itself from going deeper into the different meanings of the work and what it communicates in terms of media, image, and language – a potential analysis to be done by the visitors within their spectrum of observation – might instead take place in terms of objective outcomes within the context that it was so far presented by the time of the writing of this paper.

The Practice of Listening

Important aspects of the development of the work concern the dynamics and the power of listening, and what is explained by Audrey Lorde as the “transformation of silence and language into action.” (24) As for the documentary-based video installation, in which there is no further video or audio material apart from the interviews, listening is a key instrument and practice. Not only was it important for the development of the work, through my own listening as a means of creation, but also for the a process of co-creation of the individual meaning of the work, by means of the active engagement of the visitors with the installation. The act of active engagement with an object, through listening, further contributes to the process of meaning making and stimulation of agency towards communication. In the realms of social construction, listening is one of the first stages of apprehension and construction of agency that is further stimulated by speaking and other means of social participation and co-creation. As explained by Salomé Voegelin:

“This agency of listening, which suspends habitual experience through doubt in always-already-thereness, and performs a continual production of perception, is also the agency that will ultimately drive silent experience and bodily thought into speech. Silence is the dynamic locale of the agency of perception and it is also the locale of anticipation that wills experience to speak.” (25)

During the development of the piece, it was not possible to illustrate the specific societal outcomes or the affective political motifs of Masculinities, as the modes of presentation were not known in advance. Yet, to some extent, the objectives and critiques that motivated its development were clear. The retrospective analysis facilitated the comprehension of the main aspects that were already considered in the development of the project. Centrally, the work itself inserts the dialogue and stimulates a dynamics of listening, also for being a documentary work, but one whose outcomes could not be predicted without integrating the piece into the physical space and the opening it to the public discourse. Throughout the elaboration of the project, different creative approaches were tried out in order to fulfill the the complex task to approach the wide topic of discussing potential meanings of manhood in contemporary culture.  The characteristics of the work as an artistic construction cannot be disassociated from the participants, who were willing to talk about the topic, and opened themselves up to the discourse in the public eye. Lorde argues:

“But primarily for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth. And it is never without fear – of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death.” (26)

Visibility

The opening up for visibility, inherent to active participation in the co-creation of public life, also comes with the affective potential of the willingness to do so, being subjected to the eventual vulnerability, which may result from it. The aspect of visibility also concerns the topics discussed in the project, with the creation of a dialogue on heterogeneous views, experiences, cultural and personal understandings on manhood. Recurring to the matter of embodiment, it was not only present with the creation of a temporary physical space of discussion and embodiment of the participants, who were physically present in three different continents by the time of its exhibition. Through its embodiment, it stimulated the visibility of the refrains of the discussion on such temporal and physical aspect – considering the comprehension of refrains as “a looping of ‘pre-personal’ affective forces into a variable temporal texture” – throughout the reproduction of the 52-minutes of the piece during its exhibition. (27)

The decisions in terms of media also influenced the way the piece established communication on the theme. The three projectors arranged within the room triggered discussions of the participants revolving around the understanding of being a man, the influence of culture and the society, in which they are or were inserted through their gender development, gender performance, perceptions on societal expectations of manhood, current associations with the theme in accordance to feminism, and the view on the topic under a presupposed future parenthood. These themes had effectively a different affective potential than if the piece consisted just on a video file to be streamed online, or if it was presented in a cinema room, or if each channel was separately shown on a monitor placed within a room. Or if the channels were showcased inside a room on different monitors. The chosen format directly influenced the affective potential of the work and the way it was perceived and experienced by the visitors of the exhibition, themselves also carrying their affective potential of acting upon the piece, and upon other visitors.

The affective potential of each participant in relation to each other within the physical and metaphysical space created by the work must also be underlined. Although most of them did not know each other and were physically distanced by thousands of kilometers, the work brought them together to share a similar reflection, experience or comprehension on the theme, thereby also affecting the knowledge produced by the discussion on the topic and how it might undertake in further projections outside of the geographic and time context, in which it initially took place.