No Place For Fools

In its early days, the Soviet Revolution placed the we of utopia as its key word. A we that was accompanied by artists, filmmakers, and image-makers. Utopian images such as those of the various Constructivist movements—from pictorial abstraction testing its limits to cinematic experiments with time by Eisenstein and Vertov. The radical visual parallel of art to the radical social utopia in progress. Yet, as is well known, utopias never materialise. When they attempt to, they immediately annihilate themselves. Thus, the utopian we was destroyed, replaced by the dystopian they that would dominate for decades. They, the ones who disagree. They, the ones who are different. They, the ones who prefer we.

By the end of the twentieth century, dystopia had collapsed, imploded.

The hope of we returned, and yet it was the most unfounded of feelings. Capitalism expanded its territory, became global, and dystopia slowly transformed into aporia: there is no longer we, there is no longer they—now the only possible manifestation is that of I. A technologically enhanced I, mediated by digital devices that enclose it within a narcissistic drift of which we are now witnesses. Life has become entangled with digital technology, miniaturised through the common use of mobile phones. Everyday existence is dazzled by the possibility of their use—almost as if they were prosthetic extensions of the body itself.

In contemporary Russia, Malevich’s Suprematist cross has been replaced by the cross of Orthodox Christianity. The internationalist utopia of we has been replaced by the fundamentalist and nationalist aporia of I. The mixture is explosive, erratic. And, above all, dangerous.

The dangers produced by this contemporary narcissistic drift always involve a relationship mediated by technology. Today, we encounter a kind of technological hikikomori, no longer confined to their bedrooms, but enclosed within their mobile phones, communicating with the abstraction that the other has become, embodied merely in the number of likes received.

We know, we recognise examples of the many manifestations of this pseudo-communication. From the glorification of violence to the most regressive religious visions of the world and of reality.

The aporetic paradox is almost demented in its overlapping, oppositional layers of meaning: superficial layers built upon the generic notion of the ‘global,’ represented by its most visible and seductive aspect—consumerism—, accompanied by deeper, darker aspects dominated by religious fundamentalism, nationalism, hatred, and xenophobia.

The low-angle shots of the tiny front-facing cameras of mobile devices—despite fierce competition between manufacturers, who now market phones not as instruments of conversation but as devices equipped with cameras for reproducing reality—still produce a distortion, one heightened by proximity. The distortion provokes a kind of repulsive effect in the grotesque forms that come into view. And yet, the narcissistic drive overwhelms perception. Because it is stronger.

Because, supposedly, it is dominant: it has opinions.

Because it has the courage to share them.

Contemporary society is held captive by its fascination with machines. Perhaps that is why it cannot see the tragedy that surrounds and crushes it. Violence, wars, aggressions, insults—all have become normalised, ordinary. Images are reproduced by the millions each day, buried in some digital landfill where they meet their end, in some cloud, after their brief existence.

The supposed democratisation of image and communication is merely the politically correct version of a deeper and more dangerous populism—one that threatens, and already inflicts, damage.

Live-streamed suicides, accidents where filming the disaster matters more than helping, extraordinary images made ordinary, banal.

The totalitarian imposition of the like dictates it so.

For this reason, the images created by artists and filmmakers must now emerge as selective responses to that visual waste who was transformed into a new form of pollution whose consequences we have yet to understand.

Choice makes editing possible. Editing gives power to film. Film seeks to create resonance within its spectators. It can only achieve it by escaping the visual homogeneity of the present.

Hence its importance.

Cinema—films—by offering the idea of community, of shared experience, stand as objects of resistance to the narcissistic I. They are privileged vehicles for observing reality, this reality.

They must, therefore, be cherished. They belong to the collective we because they question us. They make us think. They lead us away from banality. They give us time: time to have time.

They need no likes.

We like them. Because we are not fools.

And that, truly, is the truth.