The spectator in the multiple scenes of contemporary art

Today's visual arts scene might be likened to atmospheric turbulence or a shooting of the rapids characterized by a multitude of conflicting, parallel and differently paced events in which values, objectives and signifying structures are as divergent as a popular song is from a contemporary symphony. In the case of visual art, the situation is obscured even further because of a lack of internal differentiation common to other art forms. There is a tendency towards homogenization concerning the manner in which the visual arts are understood. This has the effect of undermining the cultural diversity and pluralism intrinsic to the visual arts despite the fact that contemporary art includes pop culture, ethnic art, as well as art that investigates its own traditions and expressive modes.

The arts are simultaneously informed by a classical phase characterized by formal maturation and a subsequent zenith, as well as by a radical phase which displaces the old. The latter has nevertheless come to resemble a model of perpetual change in the contemporary situation. It is perhaps most apparent in the manner and speed with which new visual ideas spread through the entire culture, from mass communications to the visual rhetoric of advertising and marketing, or vice versa. The maturation and deepening of ideas no longer occur in the vertical movement of deepening; instead it is spread out - and thus diluted - horizontally.

Art has also displayed its openness through its propensity to interact with other forms of culture in addition to being able to define and delineate borderline situations. The rendez-vous between visual art and theatre is worth mentioning in this regard (as manifested in the multiple visual applications of performance art and staging). This flexibility is apparently due to the fact that our experiential world is dominated by images, which in turn creates a heightened tolerance towards different visual manifestations. The only parallel phenomenon is the world of sound, which is a cultural conduit also based on a central sense perception. Interdisciplinariness is, needless to say, not something that constitutes the deepest pulse of contemporary visual art. Visual art is already on its way to defining the realm of the possible within society-at-large, within social processes and events, as well as the very fabric of modern life itself. It can indeed be said that contemporary visual art is even more interested in the lived experience and in the culture of everyday life than in culture as such. It is also interested in the specific domains of the various sciences, their interrelationships, as well as the encounter between art and science.

Life as an esthetic project

The fact that artistic activity is oriented towards life and society also makes it political, but in a totally different way than during the sixties and seventies. Invoking an arts terminology, it could be said that the discourse of those times was a monumental one: the utopian thrust in art was directed toward a different kind of future and power structure. This was also connected to a moralizing attitude which emphasized the responsibilities of the individual versus the collective good. The art of today is more concerned with singling out specific concerns from the stream of events. Situations and events are essentially allowed to go their own way. They are held up only in order to make them visible. Art leaves its mark on events, effecting a slight gesture, move or change of direction, thus rendering visible not its proper traces but the event itself. It is, in fact, frequently a question of politicizing through the making visible of an issue, a person, a chain of thought or an event. The viewer is left to take a stand, and it is his/her personal, ethical awareness which is expected to awaken. The difficulty with these artistic interventions is often not what they communicate but that their very mode of communication is to be seen as art. It is more difficult nowadays to recognize an art practice, an artistic intervention or an action than to understand the content of contemporary art (a notorious difficulty in itself).

Taken to the extreme, this relationship between art and life is seen as no less than an alternative vision of a life grounded in esthetic and ethical choices. This entails embarking on a conscious search for alternatives to dominant modes of living that is guided by the principles of truth and beauty. It is thus a question of both a philosophical and an esthetic way of looking at things. While the notion of an esthetic and ethical way of life goes back all the way to the ancient Greeks, it is nowadays infused with new significance due to the legacy of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.

The background issue for contemporary art and contemporary culture as a whole is one of frames of reference, or how the signifying practices of art are tied to its presentational context or, in the case of an art object, to its referent. This discussion is informed by the Russian scholar Mihail Bakhtin's conceptual framework, one of the central aspects of which is polyphony or the manner in which the writer leaves his/her own persona outside the arena of events. He/she does not strive to dominate the scene but allows the fictional characters to speak with their own voices in giving rise to a dialogue which is internal to the language itself and in which individuals and their fields of reference meet within the texture of that very language. This is how the language of the literary work refers back to its fields of reference and its many voices and articulations. The corresponding development in the visual arts has recently come to be defined as polyscopy. This 'pragmatic' philosophy has grown out of philology but has also come to occupy a central place in social theory as well as discussions on art. In the context of the visual arts, the pragmatic model refers to the way that contemporary visual works use ordinary everyday life as their frame of reference. The utopianism of this perspective appears to orient itself away from the inner world of the artwork and towards the values and secrets of ordinary life. The everyday world and its movements, directions, desires and velocities have, throughout the modernist era, served to open up the self-enclosing circles of the artistic enterprise. These have acted as a counterforce, for instance, when the artistic discourse has become an overly subjective 'artist's language', or when it has become too general and hence unable to articulate the intended message. The everyday world has become a kind of utopia in contemporary art. The notion of life as an arena or object for an esthetic project also appears to be a continuation of modernism's endeavour to mark everything, in such a way as to aesthicize through an appropriation the whole world.

Inadequate readings of images?

Individualism in art is nowadays also seen as a culturally defined phenomenon. Visual communication is informed by the cultural background of both artist and viewer. Their mutual encounter is what makes the construction of meaning possible. Knowledge of this background also makes it possible to perceive a context where an alternative to existing cultural models has successfully been created. Artistic freedom is the freedom to alter existing cultural models and conventions. It does not mean that art can serve as a field for individual liberties within the context of some type of bohemian tradition. As the bohemian tradition is already part of the western cultural ethos, it can no longer function as a contemporary form of critique. Todays' s artists are called upon to demonstrate other types of artistic actions and procedures but also a fundamentally different kind of critical attitude towards cultural institutions. Artistic endeavour produces novelty or perfects present-day methods and models. However, this requirement concerning contemporary art does not seem to apply as the pace of artistic change- again in terms of horizontal development- often appears to be too rapid.

Seeds have nevertheless sprouted within the art world which point to the development of a fundamentally new attitude. One example of this nascient attitude of slowing things down is the systematic study of artistic expression and language as well as the development of applied skills through practice. A case in point is the revived interest in drawing. This development is understood in some quarters as the re-appearance of some kind of conservatism even though it is above all a question of mapping out a means of expression suitable to these times. Drawing is one way of giving form to our perception of the world as well as viewing the world afresh. The refinement of the expressive language of contemporary art is comparable to the study of music, a fact which is by no means coincidental. Of all the arts, music is the one whose language is the most developed, as evidenced through its ability to reflect on its own language, structures and formal rules, as well as its invocation of themes drawn from the surrounding reality. This two-way movement is typical of contemporary culture in general: the point is to apprehend both what is talked about and how it is talked about. Artistic phenomena are to be internalized to the degree where their very nature as well as their structures become transparent and comprehensible. This also provides the needed distance for apprehending their formal rules. The real problem with contemporary art is the above-mentioned one of whether to perceive an act or signifying gesture as art. The problem also extends to the opposite dilemma of speaking about artistic traditions, the language of art and its field of associations which the viewer does not necessarily recognize. Their recognition demands knowledge, first-hand familiarity, as well as an avid interest. Even with this kind of art, the artist is not generally prone to commenting on the formal language and its properties, but instead expresses something through it. Although this may not render the entire problem irrelevant, it might nevertheless make the process of learning this language and its culturally specific meanings more interesting. The way in which a visual image communicates a message is actually comparable to the workings of language and musical notation. Language/musical notation/images are shared means of communication, yet they also display their singularity through individual usage, interpretation and understanding. All language is social; private language is an impossibility, Wittgenstein has noted.

Is background knowledge of the specific language and tradition inadequate, or is contemporary culture itself incapable of providing the keys to its understanding? The classical answer to this question would be yes and no. However, both answers are inaccurate because the very terms of the discussion have changed. The present day ethos is one of individualism in which control over one's own life and situation is the ideal to be attained. Under these conditions, individualism is no longer just the prerogative of privileged groups (artists having traditionally reserved this privilege for themselves) but is the prerogative of everyone including viewers of art and the public at large. For example, the debate on the authenticity of art is no longer stuck on the subject of the artwork and its authenticity but is also especially concerned with the specificity and singularity of the viewer's experience. At the same time, the traditional notion of authenticity concerning a work of art is crumbling. For example, the artistic contexts created by the new media can no longer be discussed in terms of singular objects or in terms of events or performances that are tied to a specific time or place. The entire interactive-experiential model of old has undergone a partial transformation which is still in process. Evidence of this transformation in the world of art can be seen in a host of situations which rely on the viewer's own active participation. The artist is still in a position to initiate a dialogue and to define the parameters, yet the continuation of the process is up to the viewer. The art of every age has, in fact, included this two-way movement of meaning production between sender and receiver. Nobody is ultimately in a position to know exactly what the other is thinking, or what meaning another person ascribes to something, or how they experience the phenomenon in question. Contemporay art uses this conciously though its way of leaving the entire interpretive framework open to the viewer who is free to choose any number of pathways. This concerns not only those works which solicit the viewer's active participation but also those works whose language has become instrumental through their openess to various fields of individual intepretation. The chain of associations generated is then re-ordered by the viewer according to his/her own experience, knowledge, interests and personal biography. Such art encounters are no longer about the dichotomy of right and wrong, that is, whether or not the person concerned has understood the artist's intentions. The point is, rather, that of translating the whole event into one's own "language", and of uncovering its personal significance in the context of one's own world.

Alternatives in the undergrowth

Contemporary art strives to interface with different present-day phenomena. This dialogue between art and life has reached what could almost be called a set of circuits in which certain procedures, endlessly repeated, are ultimately transformed into totally uncontrolled fields of signification. The most typical case is one where "high culture" assimilate so-called "low culture" phenomena thus bringing low cultures into the realm of the former. This once radical initiative has been repeated so often that it now looks like low cultures have claimed their place within high culture as high culture itself. Yet the birthing of the new has already ceased. Art should ultimately be viewed beyond the high culture/low cultural framework as a creative way of approaching life and culture. Art's mission is here one of rendering life and its vicissitudes manageable, a mission inherited from the era of the earliest cave paintings.

Art opens up new spaces around phenomena and around concepts and meanings that have lost their grip on life and reality. It should also be remembered that there are always numerous alternatives and that programmatic and all-encompassing solutions are no longer to be expected or even tolerated in today's situation. We live in an undergrowth composed of many models and their alternatives.

One segment of the art field is already coextensive with different pop culture phenomena. In fact, just as we can speak of 'infotainment', so we could perhaps also speak of 'arttainment'. This is not in itself cause for moralizing; entertainment does have its rightful place in the world. For example, its significance for the process of group formation can be uncovered by going back to the Latin root word for entertainment, namely 'intertenere', which means 'keeping in the midst'. The word is thus a good encapsulation of the psychology of entertainment. Entertainment's relationship to culture can be summarized as an attitude of simplification and accessibility where the objective is that of capturing the attention and interest of as many people as possible. Entertainment seen in the context of art, however, is a needless short-cut in a situation where the objective is secondary to the actual experiential journey. Entertainment flirts with our emotions without leading us to an awareness or understanding of these feelings. This shortcoming also carries more general implications that go beyond the concerns and personal universe of the self. The popularity of entertainment is largely due to the eternally and universally compelling tales with emotionally seductive contents which are increasingly applied as framing stories to contemporary culture as a whole. These narratives are variations of the story of fulfilled and broken dreams and of tales of success and failure. Even though simplistic, the above narratives nevertheless appear to bind together many social groups- their allure is truly infallible.

Recent discussions on the nature of visual art have tended to view art and its institutional context from a sociological perspective as societal phenomena, or as cultural models whose significance and value is articulated through social dialogue. Art has nevertheless always been able to slide out from under various attempts to hypostatize it via labels and definitions. In the manner of Nike of antiquity, it has already moved away from where it was last pinned down. This does not in any way lessen the value of reflection and study since these endeavours serve to articulate the social determinations of art as well as those very obstacles which most people are confronted with in dealing with contemporary art.

Pockets and folds of freedom

Why is art important, and contemporary art even more so? The central task of contemporary art is to embody the times. Art is usually the first to give form to the movements, velocities, changes and swings which make up the tide of current concerns. In contradistinction to modernism's view of the timelessness of art, contemporary art recognizes time as an active and formative element. Art also reflects the current changes in our understanding of time. The concept of linear time is being superseded by a relativistic notion of time. According to the latter view, there are parallel and contemporaneous times. Time stretches from the individual's subjective sense of time to global time, and from the latter to the temporal incomprehensibility of space.

Just as the differentiation of time echoes the individualism of the current age (one's personal place and state may also imply a certain subjective sense of time), so it also makes difficult (and perhaps impossible) the creation of a type of universal art/culture. Time also binds things together while making them into stories- theirs, ours, yours and mine. Narrative is one of contemporary philosophy's key points of interest. Even though the so-called great narratives have supposedly disappeared, we continue to have a narrative spectrum consisting of many small, equally valid, yet different stories. The importance of these stories is highlighted by the claim that the human mind and soul is made up of all the narratives which are part of a person's sociocultural tradition as well as those he/she experiences, hears, reads and sees. Identity is thus seen as being made up of the emphasises with structures through which the individual has understood and memorized particular narratives. This so- called checkerboard theory of identity (Daniel Dennett) provides a perspective capable of explaining the many roles that the individual is forced to adopt and maintain throughout his/her life. The whole narrative spectrum with its countless alternatives also feeds and shapes our ability to uphold our own stories while at the same time making the construction of an overarching narrative a difficult task. One of the key problems of our time centers around the shaping of our "own" narrative. Such a narrative is necessary for the delineation of a subjective centre or self, while enlarging our understanding beyond ourselves to include another's story as well as other stories.

The pictorial narrative requires that the viewer integrate the dimension of time into the illustrated material. On the one hand, it offers an incredibly subtle and interpretively open emotional range through its use of colours and visual styles. These subtle gradations are an aspect of visual art which defies conceptual molding. Their value rests especially in their capacity to transmit feelings, emotions, nuances and moods.

The implication is that both artist and viewer need to be creative agents in order for experiences to manifest, for themes to be communicated, as well as for art to have its proper place in our world. Art can conquer, charm, irritate, produce joy and laughter, be mysterious and enchanting, point out alternatives and new paths, and give us fresh signs and a new language with which to meet the world. Art is neither worried about its future nor its place in the world. Perhaps we ourselves should be worried about the place of art in our own worlds. The realms of freedom it produces are of decisive importance both in conceiving the present and the future. The greater the ranks of those who recognize these spaces- these pockets and folds of freedom- the more interesting it is to gaze ahead in the world. It is thus important to walk, watch, concentrate, feel, recognize, experience, ponder, to share these experiences, and to act.

Maaretta Jaukkuri