[Winter 2021]

By Jeanne Randolph

 

Vain Pillaging

– I told him I was thinking, “Vain Pillaging.”

– As in futile? my friend responded.

– As in gall-darn hubris, I said. Any one of us can do what we want with names, even four-thousand-year old names.

– And, said my friend, who is familiar with my disillusioned mode of psychoanalysis, we live in an era where too many ancient names have been trademarked.

– Well, I continued, it just so happens, for literary purposes, I looked on Google for businesses with the name Olympus:

Olympus Fish and Chips;
Olympus Plasmabutton;
Olympus Men’s Briefs Underwear,
“inspired by ancient Olympians, 88% nylon.”

– The Olympians actually inspire CEOs? my friend asked.

– Indirectly, I replied. Anyway, I also searched for ancient Greek personae and place names in the e-marketplace.

– Oh, tell me! Like what?

– I’ll perform another litany, I said:

Delphi Adult Adjustment cap;
Versace Medusa Comforter;
Clotho Faux Mink Eyelashes, “shorter in length,
but still full and fluffy;”
Carbon Chorus Crankset;
Prometheus Electric Rifle Gun for Children . . .
and do not say “Shoot me now.”

– Surreal! we both squawked.

– You know what André Breton had said?

And before my friend answered, “Oh yeah” or “No,” I quoted André Breton. “What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer anything fantastic: there is only the real.”

– Do you think he meant that the allusions of mythical names have been replaced by literally material commercial prod­ucts? my skeptical pal asked with sadness in his voice. Really? So, reading or hearing the word chorus, will I some­day picture a crankset instead of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides?

I couldn’t resist upsetting my friend a little more.

– I looked for distinct Psyche consumer products on Amazon (satis dictum), I told him.

– Oh god – no. OK. I can take it. What did you find? he asked.

– It proved a tad fruitless. There are three categories: 13 Psyche jewelry, a plethora of mass media products (Kaos, for example), and pop psychology books that sport psyche in their titles. But, I raised my voice cheerfully, there ain’t no Psyche-brand handbags, garden tools, or cosmetics for sale, no Psyche-brand kitchen appliances, no Psyche-brand decor items or pet supplies.

A Hydraulics of the Mind

Friends are accustomed to my long psychoanalytic inter­rup­tions of conversations.

– The marketed goods listed above are superficial examples of a Freudian theory of advertising: the assumption is that our mental system, named Psyche, is an apparatus that includes intimate, preverbal, and autonomous mechanisms.

Psyche is universally known as the Greek term for soul or spirit. And die Psyche is the German word for the soul. Psykhe of Greek myth and German die Psyche of Freudian theory and “psyched” in the vernacular are like three dis­tinct varieties of apple growing in Hera’s orchard. (I knew my friend would appreciate the reference.)

It seems that the name Psyche still remains imbued both with mythology and with human apperception. It remains relatively fortified against commercial pillaging.

Be that as it may, we know that Medusa, Clotho, Prome­theus, and we assume many other fantastic ancient beings, are sitting ducks for the ad industry. Their alluring imagery has been commandeered ad nauseum.

These ancient potent names can illustrate Freudian theo­ries of word association and memory. The Freudian assump­tion was that our mental system, labelled Psyche, is an apparatus that includes intimate, preverbal, and autono­mous mechanisms, I repeated.

Handily for advertising, these virtual levers and pullies, pipes, and pistons drive the forces normally attached to personal or cultural memories. Choose for your business enterprise a fantastically radiant name, and presto! unleash preverbal forces. When the forces are unleashed, divert them – toward and attaching to your company or its consumer goods.

– So, my friend asked, you are thinking about ways to address the ubiquitous effects of ads and advertised commodities without an artwork itself being mistaken for an ad or a commodity?

– More to the point, I answered with a slightly competitive tone, are there ways to explore the mechanism of ad­ver­tising such that absurdities of commercialization are re­vealed?

– We’re referring to artists specifically, my friend sounded just a little irritated, which means to play rather than to preach.

– OK, OK, I agreed. Then I’m asking if there are ways to re­veal the idiocy of ads. Without plain mimicking an ad or, if mimicking, sabotaging its conventional manipulative effect. You know, seeming like an ad, but not simply reflect­ing cultural crap; interpreting or dissecting it instead.

– Dissecting it, my friend repeated. The anatomy of an ad.

– Creative anatomical display, said I.

– This isn’t a pursuit you expect every citizen or artist to bother with, right? Not every citizen or artist is as paranoid as you are about the ongoing . . .

– The ongoing . . . I almost whimpered. The ongoing dis­til­lation of muddled culture into a pure elixir of commod­ity fetishism.

– Commodity fetishism is an old-fashioned term.

– Alright, then, I countered, replace it with product adoration. Or replace it with mass standardization of desire. Or replace it with mass murder of the imagination!

My voice had become stentorian.

– Imagination is an old-fashioned word, said my friend in an informative tone, and I would say that Marcuse’s term “repressive desublimation” is very good.

– Replace imagination with psyche, then, I retorted. Re­pressive desublimation isn’t a very poetic term. Really, for us, imagination could be a synonym for psyche.

– Mass murder of the psyche, my friend said, smiling. You are playing the role of Cassandra.

I decided to let him have the last word on that.

– Here’s a good one, I told him. Consider the incongruence of a sumptuous name such as Aphrodite given to a product such as toothpicks.

– Ha! he exclaimed. This reveals the worst grandiosity, the slapdash attraction to famous words, and a gross miscal­culation of the role of toothpicks in the Cosmos!

– Exactly, I said. So this discrepancy just might pose the question of ethical aesthetics.

My friend knew exactly where I was going.

– Oh, your favourite modern philosopher again. OK, what did Wittgenstein have to say on this topic?

– In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein declared . . . I paused. He declared that “aesthetics and ethics are one.” From this and the incongruity of a toothpick named Aphrodite my challenge to artists recurs. Are there ways to address the ubiquity of ads and advertised commodities without the artwork itself being mistaken for an ad?

– Or readily mistaken for a commodity, my friend added wearily.

– And without the whiff of ethical complacency.

I had upped the ante of the challenge, and then interrupted myself.

– What would be an example of an ad’s visual and a text’s aesthetic methods? That aren’t that rare for artworks?

My friend was eager to speak.

– The condensation of image into icon. The glamour of fash­ionable colours – or no colours. The discipline of the frame. The sharp distinction between the icon’s inside and out­side. Plus witty visual effects and captivating ad copy that entertain rather than reveal a product’s trivial features and purpose.

– Well, that’s one heck of a list! And so speedily offered.

My friend spoke rather solemnly.

– I have pondered this question for a long time in my own work.

A Photograph, for Example. The setting is an unkempt work site. The ragged green bushes in the background and the rough stony foreground are typical of unfinished or abandoned construction jobs. An unidentifiable but presumably useful CAT-brand piece of equipment appears to be tethered by a weak rusty chain to a solid cement block. Attention to this detail reveals that the flimsy chain is passive atop the mass; it isn’t affixed. The title of this photograph is Prometheus.

There is a discrepancy between the heroic endurance valorized in the Prometheus myth and the grimy, squat CATmachine. The glory that was Greece alludes, if you wish, to a CATbox. And the droop of the ineffectual chain signals a commonality between this stubby box and the immortal titan Prometheus chained to a massive pillar. This commonality loosens a viewer’s psyche from the bonds of logic. Dis­crep­ancies call out for interpretations.

This place is not the stormy site to which Prometheus was condemned by Zeus. This place is basically a junkyard. There is nothing like the torch Prometheus brandished, but instead a discarded cigarette butt or two. Could the CATbox’s small stained vent be the counterpart to Prometheus’s eternally ravaged liver? The robust tragic name Prometheus is viva­cious enough to animate the box. Even if it has no psyche, the CATbox is for a moment another Prometheus. For a moment, the CATbox has a faint hidden soul.

This photograph evokes many details of the Prometheus myth. The photograph’s title connects the heroic myth to a ridiculously inert scene. Yet this connection could be said to have the same effects on the psyche (according to Freudian theory) as an ad. Conceding that technically it has been skilfully photographed, this scene wrecks the single-minded trickery of ads. None of the dejected objects in view – not the gritty earth, not the dented and soiled equipment, not the stained fence in the background – incites greed. There is nothing for sale. Yet interplay of title and image is astonishing. Does a very shabby tableau sustain the enchantment of an ostentatiously tragic myth?

The mythical allusions of the title bestowed on a grotty scene have invoked the significant disappointment of our era – the increasing domination of our surroundings by instrumentalized images – by advertising. The Children of Kaos pho­­tographs are paradoxical and mischievous autopsies. The mechanics of the psyche are revealed to be the same whether there is only one message – “buy this” – or no message at all. Like advertising, these images summon the psyche to play; but everyone knows an ad summons play only up to a point: a product. The Kaos photographs are available for the psyche’s free association, and to generate interpretations as you wish – with intellect or not, with values, with emotion, with perception, with aesthetic pleasure, with implications, with connotations, with beliefs, with history, with curiosity or not, with openness or cynicism, with good will or not, and, if you wish, with paranoia.

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Jeanne Randolph is a writer whose most recent book, My Claus­­^­­­­­tro­phobic Happiness, demonstrates her characteristically paranoid interpretation of consumerism.

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At the intersection of photography and film, David K. Ross’s practice involves ephemeral and nebulous aspects of civic or cultural infrastructure. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Ross will publish a long-distance photographic project on life-size architectural models with Standpunkte (Basel) in 2021. With the exception of a three-year period during which he taught at the Art Institute de Chicago, Ross has lived in Montreal since 2005. inferstructure.net

 
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