Introduction to the Society of Spectacles and Photo-montage Text / Ph.D. Huang Chin Fu
1. Contemporary Spectacular Society
In a society where contemporary technological production is
omnipresent, life itself has become a kind of spectacle, a colossal visual
compilation that amasses all strata of culture and forms of life. Living within
such a contemporary society of spectacles, people are trapped in a
self-sufficient or even self-deceiving world of images. In this world, many are
deceived by the spectacular sights; however, sometimes the deceptive is
deceived and deluded as well. People tend to think that the spectacular society
is constituted of presentational social images. In fact, the exploration of
"spectacles" is not to accumulate images of spectacles but an attempt
to use image as a medium to reflect social relationships among modern people.
The artistic concept of Huang Chin Fu follows the theoretical
concept of the French master of Situationist International, who focuses on
"the society of the spectacle." In recent years, Huang has been
paying attention to the everyday spectacles, or the spectacles as well as the
image tension and visual contradiction in the everyday world created by the
spectacular society, along with the energy and creativeness produced when the
two collide.
As the world has ventured into an era of globalization, astute
contemporary artists capable of in-depth thinking are paying more and more
attention to the everyday world as well as the influence of the power relations
in the everyday society and the problems they have caused. In the context of global
capitalization, the bargaining chips of the capitalist economy and Western
political regimes have been collaterally and expansively affecting everyone's
daily life in this world. In capitalistic marketing, not only the production
modes are globalized, the minorities have become labor providers for powerful,
dominant countries. Consequently, the poor becomes poorer and the wealthy
richer. The so-called globalized social structure is also gradually transformed
into a spectacle by politics, economy, media, and information-the skyscrapers
in Dubai is a spectacle; the rapid rise of China is a spectacle; capitalists
swiftly tearing down historical properties is a spectacle; and those Pokémon
players sleepwalking in groups is definitely a spectacle. However, the real
lives of the people who are living in the spectacular world is continuously
marginalized and rendered insignificant and homogeneous.
The "spectacle" that Debord has addressed is not simply
decorative image that is subordinate to the real world or the visual
representation of a commercialized society, such as news, propaganda,
advertisement, entertaining performance, etc. The virtual information sent out
by the society of spectacle is based on its principle-"what appears is
good; what is good appears." Therefore, people begin to pursue in life the
production system and mode of life dictated by the society of spectacles. The
more they follow the production of this enormous economic loop, the further
removed from the real life they become; and "a lonely crowd" is, therefore,
produced and defined. Very few people are aware of the fact that the society of
spectacles does not represent the core of the real human life. Instead, these
spectacles have already become the dominating developmental modes of life in
the current society.
Our exploration of the spectacular society may be a philosophy that
can never be realized. In other words, it is an attempt to philosophize the
reality, to transform people's actual life into a world to be quietly observed.
In the end, it displays a comatose state of consciousness that rebels against
the life in contemporary society, an escape from "commodity hypersomnia
syndrome." The general public is entrapped into thoughtless activities
that tame their minds to obey the object that has taken over control. These
behaviors of constant alienation lead to a consequence that when people expect
more from the commodified life, the less experience and wisdom they can get out
of the real life. Namely, when people have stronger identification with the
demanded images provided by the leading system of the spectacular society, they
will have less understanding of their own survival and desire. The emergence of
the spectacular society implies that capitalist commodity has already
monopolized the contemporary life. The entire world that surrounds the life of
the general public is a capitalist world of commodity.
Facing such a spectacular and diversified contemporary life and
economic environment, how should we step over into different fields or break
different disciplines as if we were tributaries in order to organize and derive
various forms of liberation? With this diverse framework of liberation, our
aesthetic thinking of the so-called "society of spectacles" should
obviously be concerned with more than a form of visual representation that
criticizes the commercialized society. Instead, it should be a kind of
introspective thinking that targets the entire social environment and
production system. More importantly, this thinking about the society of
spectacles that encompasses issues of social phenomenon, commercial landscape,
or urban aesthetics can be further extended to interpret the aspects of human
life and the creative power of culture in the contemporary society of
spectacles.
2. Thoughts on Photo-montage
The term "montage" originally means "putting things
together." When photography and montage are combined, it refers to a type
of "composite photograph" created with means such as cutting and
pasting, piecing together, editing, compositing, etc. These reorganized and
edited composite images could even use other photos to produce images, of which
the contents are contradictory to the original ones. Therefore, on an
ideological level, they produce changes and conflicting ideas between opposing
images, which collide and give rise to a fresh concept. It is like the montage
of image X and image Y produces the new image Z instead of a simple mixture of
images X and Y.
In terms of techniques, before the technology of digital imaging
became mature and widely available, artists employed darkrooms techniques or
re-photographing to create seamless images that were visual surprises different
from the ordinary reality. Photo-montage made use of various parts of
photographs to create composition often seen in painting; it was also the
process (or result) of creating a composite photograph through cutting and
pasting a series of photos. Artists continuously worked with the techniques of
montage in order to transform their photographs into a kind of perfect and
seamless images of spectacle.
The beginning of photo-montage could be traced back to the end of
the 19th century. Many photographers, such as Oscar Rejlander and Henry Peach
Robinson started using the method of multiple exposures to produce composite
images that were much more complicated than the original photographs. In
addition to its application in photography, photo-montage gradually became
popular in the production of graphic images in newspapers, magazines, and
postcards. Film segment, text, color, and informational image could also be
used as a part of a work. These photo-montage works began to possess
characteristics of exaggerated images and exceeded what the original
photographs could convey.
This new artistic and aesthetic form of photo-montage impacted on
the rigidity of traditional painting and the single lens of photography. It has
had lasting and extensive influence on the 20th-century society as well as its
culture and arts. In addition to photography, it also influenced cinema (e.g.
the Russian director that gave birth to film montage, Sergei Eisenstein), Dada
(for instance, the photo-montage by dada artists like John Heartfield, George
Grosz, Hannah Höch, Raoul Haussman, and Josep Renau), and surrealists (such as
Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Max Ernst). This approach to freely create art
later affected the concept of graphic design of the 1930s and began to develop
in the pioneering institute of design, Bauhaus. Photo-montage began to be used
in commercial graphic design, especially for posters and magazine covers. Some
Bauhaus artists (Joost Schmidt and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy) and surrealists at that
time (Max Ernst, Leo Malet, and Man Ray) employed photo-montage extensively to
create their so-called "image poems," and advocated a mechanical
approach to produce images. Through photo-montage, they had developed and
displayed many innovative designs for and different aspects of the modernized
world of their time.
Moreover, because photo-montage could be massively reproduced and
conveniently deliver graphic information, it gradually became a form of
propaganda for revolutionary art at that time. Many avant-garde artists or
Dadaists had brought the method to its full play, which fueled the avant-garde
movement between WWI and WWII. These avant-garde artists were deeply fascinated
by photo-montage, which could be reconstructed and serve as an instrument for
socio-political criticism while being reproduced in large numbers in the form
of posters, newspapers, and magazines. Most of these avant-garde artists or
Dadaists came from Germany at that time as well as the rising Soviet Union. In
the 1920s, they created this new aesthetic rule, which was to use photo-montage
to create images of political criticism. These artists included John
Heartfield, the Dadaists based in Berlin (Hannah Höch and Raoul Haussman), and
the artists of the Soviet Union during the Russian Revolution in the 1920s (El
Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and Gustav Klucis). Strictly speaking, these
artists were not photographers, but hey used photo-montage to produce many
artworks to satirize and condemn totalitarianism of the time. They converted
photo-montage into a cultural weapon that advocated revolutions and criticized
people that upheld totalitarianism. These images not only possessed free forms
embraced by Dadaism, they also formed a kind of social realization and critical
power.
3. Between Montage and the Image of Spectacles
Photo-montage and the image of spectacles are similar in terms of
ideology. They do not just mix and combine some peculiar images, but aim to use
image as a medium to reflect and unfurl the social relations among people.
From the artistic approach and production method of photo-montage,
we can understand that it is an instrument of representation, creating the
composition of painting through altering the proportion or re-combination. It is
a technique similar to photo-montage. This method of montage has become a
unique technique that the avant-garde art has relied on since the 20th century
because it is not simply sketching and expressing what the eyes see as it is
the case in painting but rather extremely accurate photographic image. The
accuracy and documentary quality have offered a visual impact and liberation to
the public. One could say that it elicits the familiarity that people feel
about real images, and creates a world of newfangled images with a mixture of
images. By doing so, it unveils an artistic approach intimate to the life of
the public and its culture.
The purpose of these montages is not to produce a documentary image
but rather to focus on the exploratory quality of it. The reason is that most
people see image as a form to express the object and ignore the fact that image
itself could be exploratory and extended. Moreover, the free and innovative
advanced techniques of photo-montage shatter the lasting conceptual limitation
of artistic expression while expanding the possibility of photography. Whether
it is to manipulate light, object, or concrete image, it is actually a way to
alternate and surpass realism or reality.
Photo-montage's power to challenge visual reality offers a kind of
visual perception posited between "an absurd representation of
reality" and "a real representation of the absurd." As a matter
of fact, in the first half of the last century, photo-montage was not only an
innovative artistic technique, it was also symbolic as it provided a rich
language of spectacular images to depict urban civilizations and fight against
wars. We could see that the early works of photo-montage were conceived from a
proletarian perspective to encourage and stimulate people to watch. They
intended to increase people's awareness and awaken them (to question and see
through the seemingly correct images in daily life) through engaging the
public's visual experience (such as all kinds of quotidian and economic images
that the public was familiar with). From this perspective, it could be seen as
a type of strategic propaganda and promotion, making use of the cleverness of
photo-montage to expose and criticize the illusions of progress in modern
society.
As photographic equipment became more affordable and available and
as the technology developed, artists were able to display their observation and
documentation of various aspects of the spectacular society through the
aesthetics of photo-montage. Additionally, the function of the new
photo-montage aesthetics was not just to define the various ways of using
image. Photo-montage, in fact, was the pioneer of the new avant-garde image
that emphasized spectacular images. The key issue is that the power of
criticism conveyed through photo-montage has led to the breaking and
questioning of modernist aesthetics. Visually speaking, it is something like a
division, discontinuity, and perceptual impact, and has slowly become a weapon
used to rebel against the kind of aesthetics that was non-political. Finally,
the aesthetics of photo-montage has incorporated Dadaism and the avant-garde,
and paved the way for different basic forms of expression in documentary image,
such as collecting, overlapping, collaging, and conceptualizing. It also gave
birth to the aesthetics of documents and conceptual development that were to
come later, producing an extensive range of documentary forms and their
application.
4. About Spectacular City Story: An Image Exploration of the City
The work of Huang Chin Fu attempts to explore the context and
changes of contemporary spectacular society through photo-montage and
spectacular image. The artist hopes to enter the still, strange photo-montage
with painting or virtual image to deal with all urban landscape or real objects
that are involved with rapid consumption, commercialization, and
homogenization. He re-combines these peculiar images and transforms them into
spectacular images, trying to show the energy and thinking embedded in the
images to collide with the current reality and society. It is hoped that the
visual images of spectacles could become an instrument and strategy to
challenge and oppose the excessive development of globalization and capitalism.
Since he finished his doctorate study of contemporary art in Spain
in 2012, Huang's artistic thinking and creation have been centering on the
research and development of "contemporary photo-montage with
painting." He tries to employ the traditional functions of photography,
such as documentary image and street photography-to witness or store history,
incidents and memories-and transforms them into "the image representations
of the spectacular society" through photo-montage with painting. In other
words, contemporary photography can be used in a democratic and diverse way,
gradually stepping away from its original cultural, documentary, and historical
functions. It can even adopt an avant-garde stance that distances itself from
the journalism or aesthetics of traditional documentary photography, and
further creates a position and perspective for criticism. Combining
photo-montage with the power of painting allows it to move away from simply
producing images and enables it to use organized and systematic strategies to
explore and investigate socio-economic issues.
There are many things in this world that will eventually disappear.
To name an example by portraying a sad circumstance: the city we are most
familiar with will someday disappear from our life without people even
realizing it. Therefore, the artist aims to contemplate the fact that if
photography is to produce authenticity, would it be possible that what we have
captured through photography is the disappearing time and space of "the
actual reality"? That is, through real photographic documentation, it is
obliquely shown to us the disappearance of "the real phenomenon"
behind the real image.
Being in the globalized, technologically advanced modern metropolis,
the excessiveness of information images might induce changes in human being's
visual experience. The public visual messages everywhere could also entice
people to endlessly pursue desire, power, and wealth in intoxicating commercial
activities. Generally speaking, the vainglorious visual quality of current
information image could be seen in all globalized cities. From global
metropolises known to everyone in the world to small cities and towns, urban
visual spectacles created with technological images could all be found in them.
These spectacles will keep growing and expanding until they completely consume,
envelop, and manipulate the visual life of the general public. This phenomenon,
on the other hand, makes the artist want to create and abandon the visuality of
information that is easy to circulate in contemporary cities. Instead, with
changes of forms that could serve as metaphors, concrete realistic images, or
virtual photo-montage, he aims to reflect and criticize the information society
for feeding the public false illusions. Therefore, Huang has created this
discourse to discuss the spectacular urban images, hoping to convey his
thinking about contemporary urban landscape. Perhaps, through his work, people
could have an opportunity to perceive the world of "spectacles" and
its possibility in the fast and superflat city overwhelmed in the flow of information.