Chapt.3 Day 2 - Digital arts 301 essay (Self-design and aesthetic responsibility)

(Images: Cindy Shermans conceptual portraits from untitled film stills #16)
Word count: 1 459

'Click' to access and read Boris Groys essay

Exploring the parameters of self-design as a form of creative liberation in a world where everybody is born into social roles, expectations and responsibilities. Presented herewith is a discussion on Boris Groys essay on self-design and aesthetic responsibility, illustrating points with Cindy Shermans conceptual portraits. Introducing the idea of self-design, the political fabric of design, the influence of mass media, self-design in the analogue and the digital world and representational authorship.

Self-design understood as an orchestrated form of presentation where the author is aware of what they place in the public gaze and the meaning that it makes. Cindy Sherman explored these dynamics of design in her work as character creational conceptual portraits making socio-political commentary on the roles and representations of women in society.  Cindys’ conceptual portraits could be thought of as self-design in actual practice, because of the type of construction that went into bringing these characters to life.

Although Cindy never considered herself a feminist, her work could be interpreted by feminists in that way because of the type of issues it raises in the social construction of women in contrast with the men in the same society. In this respect is how art and politics do not exist isolated from each other although theoretically the two ideas can be separated. In reality wherever there is man there is politics, the same way in which mass media has adjusted analogue reality with supplementing that with digital reality, created an entirely new public sphere all together where the day to day performance of existing can be staged.

Where there is politics there is media (mediums of communication) in the contemporary world. The point that Boris Groys made about politics in art and art in politics in that the ‘politicization of art is seriously intended and practiced’ (e-flux journal #7 –June aug 2009 Boris Groys) can be measured with empirical evidence from the physical world as we know it. Politics as understood through the systematic structure of governance has also changed over the years with the advent of mass media emerging as the largest and most powerful image generating machine much more extensive and effective then the contemporary art system, as explained in detail in the essay. This change has affected the relationship between the contemporary artist and the politician where there is no such mutual dependence as there used to be in the past.

Boris writes about the changes in communication since the time when politicians needed artists to represent their ideas to a time now where mass media just registers politicians immediately generating images and interpretations. With self-design and aesthetic responsibility, Cindy Sherman’s work managed to bring both politics and art together in a way that does not separate one discipline from another one. “When art becomes politics it discovers that politics has already become an art” Quoted Boris Broys.

The ways in which mass media is able to impose aesthetic responsibility on the general public is through the media gaze that is able to hold individuals accountable for what they present about themselves to the public, such that Cindy Shermans work takes on completely different meaning in this society where the digital sphere allows every human being to produce their own artworks whether oblivious of or aware of the authorship in their communications.

With Life through the media meaning that the artist becomes the artwork entails that there will be a confrontation of the construction of the image of self whether in order to correct, change, adopt or contradict this image. The three facets of self-design which are the problems faced in each construction of character are, How I design the world outside, how I design myself and how I deal with the way in which the world designs me. These are the challenges that self-design presents as mass media has made self-design a cultural practice, although not everyone produces artworks, everyone is an artwork  while expected to be an author of their own representations.

This is seen from how Cindy Sherman would draw inspiration from random people and then re-model the roles that they embody through her own creations of character, telling stories of how people are subjected to an aesthetic evaluation of their appearance in the world whether conscious of or oblivious of that fact. Many of Cindy Shermans works are self-designs that question how certain figures have to be presented to the contemporary audience as designed surfaces.

There is more creative opportunity in the digital world compared to the analogue world. The analogue space is all about immediate presentation whereas in the digital space one can alter specific elements of their own design in the construction of elements they have no control over in immediate reality. Digital software and equipment can make the production of works much simpler.

There are also limits to the extent at which people can design themselves, there are limits and contributing factors that further contextualises you into a social role based on the environment from which you are born into,  factors such as socio-economic and political elements that impact the entire make-up of your identity in specific ways.

When assuming self-design you need to consider how you design your world, how you deal with how the world designs you and how you design your environment and everything else that surrounds you, so it is not a clean cut process where an individual decides on something outside of the rest of society and then expects to interpret meaning that will be understood by that same world the reproduction was conceived from. Self-design in itself is not a practice that you can isolate from your environment and the social fabric from which you emerge from because we engage with society every day and do not exist outside of that mould in our individual existence.

With the aestheticization of reality and the cynicism of expecting design to be the concealing of something instead of the revealing of it, This idea can also be illustrated in Cindy Shermans representations where once she gets into her character and totally loses herself, The audience is able to identify where the new surface takes form and sees her go from herself and into the embodying of the character that she has just created.

Aestheticization brings us to the question of sincerity. Assuming that aestheticization is a critique on its own in that without the designed surface the element would be ugly and unbearable without design acting as some type of façade. Cindy Sherman would get into a state of construction with her work bringing together a designed surface through make-up and costume completely creating a new character which further supports the notion of the façade. This creates an immediate distrust of the media in a world where the good does not make as much sense as the bad.

Although we exist in a time where everyone is an artwork although they may not necessarily be artists, still places them at a position where held accountable for the authorship of their interpretations. Boris Groys attended to the issue of authorship through exposing the learned strategy of calculated self-denunciation in self design. At a time when the design of honesty fails because reality suggests a different type of truth to that one presented by celebrities trying to maintain a level of sincerity made unrealistic by factors involved in that particular industry,  Which raises the question that “Is the production of sincerity still true sincerity although it is a construction without materialising naturally?” This is also demonstrated through the way in which people who present themselves as particularly nasty and ethically bad win favour for appearing genuine as nobody believes somebody can be completely good. The subtler form of self-design is that of symbolic suicide, where the artists announces the death of the author as his or her own symbolic death. Not proclaimed bad but proclaimed dead. An anonymous authorship of their work such as with artists such as Banksy is also practice encouraging the public to join in as a form of participatory art. Participatory art can be described as an artist’s production and exhibition of art where the public views and evaluates what is being exhibited.