Authentic Experience:
Multiplicity and Dislocation in Printmaking
and Contemporary Culture
A presentation for the 2009 IMPACT Conference by Kevin Haas
Introduction
A quintessential conundrum of contemporary life is a quest for authentic
experience within a sea of mass production. The print exists between
the ubiquity of this production and our attempts to recover our own individuality
in the midst of this. In light of the immeasurable quantity of goods
produced
throughout the world, I have wondered if artists’ prints and multiples
can counteract other means of uniform production, or if they belie a
fantasy for production on this scale?
The project of printing has always been to meet or exceed the need to provide
information to a growing mass culture. The field of printmaking, although
interconnected to the technology of this world, has been primarily focused
on craftsmanship and artistic expression. Although there are many different
issues that can be explored in depth between these contrasting modes of production,
I have chosen to examine the larger spheres of production and consumption,
in order to position the democratic potential and limits of printmaking with
more clarity. Naturally, issues of the handmade and its relation to the mass
produced emerge. Questions of authenticity are also interwoven into this debate,
and can be reconsidered through ideas that come from the field of tourism
studies. Even though I am trying to connect ideas that may seem very separate
from printmaking, it is clear that artists working with prints and multiples
are positioned to confront these issues and implications, residing somewhere
in the middle of this dislocating situation which is our everyday lives.
Production / Consumption
On a scale from the unique to the mass produced, prints fall much closer
to the unique object, despite their multiplicity. Do they hold the elite
status that the unique art object holds, even though their commercial value
may be
diminished because they exist as multiples? Or, do they maintain an aura
of authenticity while providing the familiarity of being connected to the
world
of goods around us? Although the print can be viewed as an elite object
because of its comparatively limited audience, its very multiplicity makes
it an insistent
problem to art and high aesthetics. It seems that this uneasy position
fuels the debate on the accessibility and dispersal of printmaking, which
can appear
somewhat trivial in light of the array of tools for mass communication
and production.
The documentary on Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky titled “Manufactured
Landscapes” is an examination of the effects of production and consumption.
His stunning photographs instantly attract and repel us by documenting
the massive impact of industry on our landscapes. The opening shot to the
film
is a continuous eight and a half minute long pan across the length of a
factory in China. Seeing production on this scale is an astonishing if not
sobering
sight.
Consumption is the necessary corollary to production, but we should consider
how this balance has shifted over the last several centuries. The pre-modern
society was production-based, and focused primarily on meeting the basic
necessities of small localized groups, families, and individuals. More
indulgent or affluent
forms of consumption were available only to the elite. With the emergence
of industrialization in the modern period, through the middle of the last
century, increasingly complex forms of mass consumption became a requisite
component of production on a mass scale. During this time, there was a
balance between production and consumption, but since the 1980’s, consumption
has taken precedence, particularly in a symbolic form on a globalized scale.
According to Paul Ransome, we have moved “towards a type of society
where...there is no longer any necessary relationship between a particular
act of production and a particular act of consumption.” The meanings
and interpretations of what we consume predominates, while variety and
difference are essential aspects to production. Consumption is conspicuous
and interwoven
with leisure.
The diversity and variety of prints created are representative of a range
of personal values and ideologies, thus catering to a variety of consumers,
but
their consumption still remains very localized. Most printmakers never make anything
in quantities so vast to be considered mass produced. Although this potential
exists, it is often an idea that printmakers merely flirt with. Prints directly
acknowledge their potential for consumption through their very multiplicity.
Most fine art printmaking publishing studios will usually produce up to fifty
impressions of a print, while individual artists may be satisfied with as little
as two or three. Publishing studios may have the resources to sell their prints
to a wider audience, but there are still a limited number of people or organizations
that are willing spend $800 to many thousands of dollars on a print. This, along
with the cost of time and labor to produce prints, determines that the numbers
must be kept low for practical reasons, as well as to maintain demand. As it
is with all art, these prints are an unregulated commodity and their ownership
acknowledges affluent consumption: the privileged site of autonomy, meaning,
subjectivity, privacy, and freedom. (Ransome, 2005)
Some art dealers have found that the Internet, and archival inkjet printers,
provide the best way to meet the demand for affordable art. This new form of
publishing has proven successful for Web sites such as 20x200, and Artocracy.
20x200, whose tag line is “(limited editions * low prices) + the internet
= art for everyone,” releases new original editions weekly. Each edition
is typically available in three standard sizes: 8? * 10?, 11? * 14?,
and 16? * 20?, and are created in quantities of up to 200, 500, and
20 respectively. The smallest size always sells for $20. Changing attitudes towards
multiplicity, new technologies, and, most significantly, accessible pricing,
has made this form of producing editions more attainable than many handmade prints.
Common to the printmaking community is the exchange portfolio, which sidesteps
the usual economic exchange for goods. At the recent Southern Graphics Council
Conference in Chicago there were fourteen curated exchange portfolios on view,
with prints by approximately two hundred and forty artists, myself included.
This outpouring of prints champions the egalitarian potential of the print, and
cooperative exchange over economic value. However, they are exchanged amongst
an exclusive and limited number of people and continue to satisfy a need for
both autonomy and community.
Globalized Mass Production / The Handmade
If prints are much like other unique works of art, how do we evaluate their
multiplicity in the context of production on a globalized scale? How can
the handmade multiple
act against the ubiquity of other goods, and why choose a process that allows
us to make more of something, when we are already surrounded, and inundated,
by uniformity?
Brian Ulrich’s series of photos titled ‘Copia,' the Latin word for
abundance, explore the implications of consumerism. His photograph of the countless
checkout aisles receding into the distance at a Target superstore in Indiana
is a perfect example of the excess of consumer culture and the incessant demand
for goods.
When we bring home that new coffee maker, and open the box, it is as if we are
the first human to ever lay hands on this object. It is perfectly wrapped, sealed
with carefully positioned pieces of tape, and free of any traces of fingerprints
from the person who assembled it. We are led to believe it was born into the
world for us and by us. This hygienic and virginal object purposefully disguises
the act of its creation and makes the persons involved in its production irrelevant.
This disconnection is the baseline for much of our daily lives, and is perhaps
the crux of the continued engagement so many of us have with printmaking. It
allows us to participate in the world of production but remain firmly rooted
in individual expression and craftsmanship. If consumerism allows us to align
ourselves with different lifestyles and subcultures by defining our personal
preferences and desires, making by hand becomes the reverse of this, while still
paralleling this compulsion. Throughout the day, most of us use things we have
not made, do not understand, and could never fabricate on our own. Artist working
within the field of printmaking share traditions, conventions and innovations
that provide a sense of connection. With printmaking we are able to reveal something
about ourselves and, in the words of Richard Sennett, “imagine larger categories
of ‘good’,” by learning from the physical actions of creation
and production. The activity of making prints reinforces human limits through
the idiosyncrasies of the handmade and because of their limited dispersal. It
makes up for disconnection by providing the possibility of a positive relationship
between production and consumption, and by communicating very specifically and
directly, rather than to a mass audience.
The series of etchings by Joseph Lupo, simply titled ‘Receipts,’ seem
to neatly encapsulate the dilemmas we encounter between consumerism, the multiple
and the handmade. They replicate receipts he has received for various everyday
goods, and are all created at the same size as the ‘original.’ Although
they are faithfully recreated and etched into the copper plates, the slight shakiness
of the line quality, the plate tone, and embossment of the plate on the paper,
are the telltale signs of the disparity between making by hand and the tracking
of our consumer habits.
There is a wavering balance between the autonomy and the craft present in printmaking.
Craft and process can predetermine form, while individual expression strives
to exceed these conventions. The production of more goods engages within a capitalist
system where commodities are the primary carriers of meaning. (Adamson, 2007)
Artists working with prints may attempt to circumvent this relationship, but
it can be difficult to completely disengage from this system.
Conrad Bakker’s ‘Untitled Mail Order Catalog’ is just that:
a fully functional mail-order catalog of designer objects. The difference is
that upon closer inspection, you realize that all the items for sale are actually
hand carved and painted objects, and rather crudely so. They are entirely dysfunctional,
and even if they were the real things, most of the objects he has chosen to replicate
are of little practical use. However, these are not just art objects for those
who can afford them. The price of these little sculptures is determined by the
price of their original counterparts: $295 for the LCD Pocket Television, $45
for the Digital Tire Gauge. Conventional art world price distinctions are overturned
in favor of the fetish for commodities. It is a confrontation where art as commodity
competes with all the other endless goods available to us.
The sculpture by Jeff Carter, titled ‘Catalog (Blue Tables),’ appropriates
an IKEA table—a mass-produced multiple—to address its production
and our complicity with this object. By fragmenting and animating several of
the tables, and removing them from the world of functional, low-priced furniture
with a pleasing designer aesthetic, they are transformed into a tiny square of
ocean. Perhaps it is the very ocean these tables traveled across by container
ship to reach North America. But this picture wouldn’t be complete without
some trace of the resources used, and the waste generated to satisfy our nesting
needs. There, bobbing on the surface is the ubiquitous plastic water bottle.
As much as this playfully and inventively brings the broader spectrum of production
and consumption to the forefront, it also addresses the excess that we cling
to: travel, desire, and consumption, all components of this.
Tourism / Authentic Experience
Travel and tourism is the largest industry in the world. It seduces individuals
with the impression that they have left their everyday experiences behind, and
have stepped into something exotic, although this is often never truly the case.
Travel and tourism manifest our desires for enriching authentic experiences.
Being a tourist also connects us with similar, shared experiences: a world of
universal experiences. It is also about consuming goods and services, which are,
in a sense, unnecessary. Tourism is a leisure activity that allows us to participate
in the ‘modern experience’ and display the status we have achieved
at work and at home. (Urry, 2002)
Upon arrival at a destination we may find that the actual place doesn’t
quite live up to the reproductions we have seen throughout our lives. Standing
beside us are other tourists with cameras who, although strangers, are somehow,
at least superficially, eerily like ourselves. Tourism is a way of choosing to
define ourselves, just as we chose to buy this item or another, although many
others may be making similar purchases. It is perhaps the best example of the
dilemma I am attempting to identify; each of us trying to consume those moments
of ‘being there’ with our digital cameras and cell phones, while
we multiply nearly identical images taken by more tourists from across the globe.
It may be somewhat of a stretch to connect tourism with printmaking, but hopefully
the broad parallels that can be made provide some more insight into what the
authentic might be. The simple fact is that most of us attending this conference
are tourists, whether we choose to admit it or not. The tours of galleries, museums,
and studios, and the entertainments provided by the particular destination, all
provide an opportunity of ‘being there’ and hopefully connecting
in some meaningful way so that we may eventually share and reproduce these experiences
with others. But these experiences can be limited, cursory, and predetermined:
the gaze of the tourist. The print itself can deprive us of our desire for unique
experiences, since it is only one of potentially numerous similar images.
The art world sustains a great deal of tourism by providing enticing destinations
like new ‘starchitect’ designed museums, and art fairs, along with
the ensuing hotels, restaurants, and nightlife. One characteristic that determines
the tourist’s experience is that it happens in places that are not directly
connected with paid work, and typically offer some contrast to it. (Urry, 2002)
But for the artist tourist this can become confused since the destination many
of us head to—the museum—is itself, a tourist site. The art world
easily blurs the relationships between work, leisure and status.
The screenprints by the collaborative team of Ben Langlands & Nikki Bell
titled ‘Air Routes of the World,’ depict a map of these routes, with
a day version and a night version. Their artist book ‘Frozen Sky,’ continues
with the theme of global travel and lists the many cryptic three letter codes
for airports throughout the world accompanied by more maps of flight patterns.
Despite the connectedness these maps may imply, it is ultimately a system of
disconnection and isolation, which is revealed by the fragmented text interspersed
through the book stating phrases such as “Transience & Alienation,” “Disposability & Discontinuity,” and “A
Suspended Future.”
Authenticity can seem to be an elusive term, and is perhaps diluted of its true
meaning when considered in relation to tourism and how we choose to experience
the world. Uniqueness becomes difficult to define when everywhere we turn we
find more experiences and things carefully marketed to our perceived needs and
desires. Finding a distinction between the tourist and the traveler can define
how we choose to seek out authenticity. Presumably, it is the traveler who has
a deeper, more connected and enriching experience. The traveler could be compared
to the craftsman, as opposed to the amateur and tourist, making engagement, concentration,
and time, the primary means of encounter.
The mass produced print, such as the picture postcard, idealizes and glamorizes
tourist destinations, by replicating and condensing place and experience into
an iconic and unattainable universal image. With the fine art print however,
the simple point is that the original and the multiple cannot be separated from
one another. The print is both the experience and its reproduction: the authentic
is forever fragmented and multiplied.
Conclusion
None of these issues are new to printmaking, but when viewed through
the lenses of mass production and tourism, our perspective is hopefully
changed by examining
what surrounds us in the contemporary world. The tourist experience has many
layers of false authenticity, and consumerism only provides us with a partial
fulfillment of our desires. Locating originality, or the value of reproduction,
when we are lost within a profusion of goods and experiences, can be a bewildering,
if not futile quest. What does remain constant and undeniable, is a need for
systems of communication that provide real engagement and meaningful exchange.
Perhaps the dialogue that printmaking sustains manages this in some small way,
even while it is part of the dislocation we witness around us.
References
Adamson, G., 2007. Thinking Through Craft. Oxford: Berg.
Baichwal, J., 2006. Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes. New York:
Zeitgeist
Films Ltd.
Bakker, C., 2002. Untitled Mail Order Catalog. Urbana, IL: Conrad Bakker.
Baudrillard, J, 2002. Selected Writings. 2nd Edition. Stanford University Press.
Bonami, F., et al, 2005. Universal Experience: Art, Life, And The Tourist's Eye.
Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, and New York: Distributed Art Publishers.
Grunenberg, C. (editor), et al, 2002. Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer
Culture. Hatje Cantz Publishers.
Langlands, B, and Bell, N., 1998. Frozen Sky. Kitakyushu, Japan: CCA Kitakyushu
+ Korinsha Press.
MacCannell, D., 1976. The Tourist : a New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York:
Shocken Books.
Ransome, P., 2005. Work, Consumption and Culture: Affluence and Social Change
in the Twenty-first Century. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Sennett, R., 2008. The Craftsman. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
Urry, J., 2002. The Tourist Gaze. 2nd Edition. London: Sage Publications Ltd.