Kovitz put us in the event space. He gives us an example of thinking in the position of the event (the space of excess where Baudrillard combines the subject and object in "Fatal Strategies"), and that example seems to tell us (or prove) that the imaginary space of pataphysical innovation is logical and that meaning can be maneuvered and guided (can mean) without being bound by constraints of either a pre-defined meaning or logic.
If I had to describe the experience of reading Kovitz's book, I would say that he created confusion in me and then controlled (and sustained) that confusion with the ideas that each quote and image created in me, in themselves, and due to their particular placement. His topic on pigs in itself is enough to initiate confusion in the reader, but he obviously uses the history of the mass production and slaughter of pigs to make simultaneous statements about the influences that govern society and human thinking and action. His book is notably meticulous in its appropriation of models and plans for pig farms. I particularly enjoyed the detailed accounts of workers' experiences on the farm, which made me think of how routine relates to our project. Kovitz makes art out of the agricultural practice of pig farming simply by re-creating its details--and newly identifying them as simply what they in a different context. He uses pigs and pig farms, but he could just as well be writing about the data that transfers through well-designed and optimized databases and server farms that drive the information exchange on the internet and internal and external data networks? Kovitz's order in the book identifies a deeply rooted (mechanistic) disorder that operates on a semantic level which the order itself dismisses. This idea alone makes his book--and the story I decided to make from its associations--profound.
Meaning emerges on a spatial plane that exists beyond (and because of) the juxtaposition and order of quotations and images in the book. The book cannot make sense without a reader. In this sense, it insists that meaning is derived from the reader's cognitive interaction with the visual and textual triggers. The meaning does not exist in the words or their grammar, but it depends on a collective social system of rules that it does not itself define. Kovitz arranged the book by appropriating texts and images from different authors. It can be said that he didn't really author the book itself, but there is no denying that he authored a meaning that exists beyond the text. The book itself, with a black and white image of a pig on the cover partially highlighted by yellow ink and framed with a black border, seems to suggest an oddly articulated dimensional emphasis, vaguely recalling how a 3D image looks without 3D glasses. Perhaps this yellow distortion is representing the holographic dimension of meaning that Kovitz authors. The book takes work to understand, even when the meanings start to flow into a recognizable form about a quarter of the way into the book. It is certainly not a passive experience and, in that respect, reading the book is an extremely intellectual experience, which involves what I can only describe as the pleasure a person experiences privately when he or she gets a joke or manages to work out a complex puzzle.
As our tale, Kovitz provides an example of what we need to achieve with our accident space of our disaster.
No comments:
Post a Comment