The Contextualization of Ars Systematis

Introduction: The Method

The act of contextualizing both an artwork and ones’ artistic practice reveals two very different acts in itself. At first instance, the process of contextualization happens at the subject level. Exploring the subject - in our case the most well defined characteristics of Ars Systematis - is the first step towards an analytic contextualization. Only a well defined subject is capable of showing its’ contemporary relatives, both aesthetical and conceptual. In other words, you simply cannot contextualize something if you do not know what was that thing in the first place.
This process, contextualization, may sound obvious for some in first place. However, it is when we realize the subtleties involved with context that we see our certainties fading. Purely visual aestheticism for example, as understood by the majority of the art field, does not fully directly our research. In the quest for historical and textual relations between an artwork and its’ relatives, sight may count very little. A purely aesthetic endeavour might end up with just another incomplete picture of the complex historical relations between an artwork and its’ contemporaries. In relation to Ars Systematis, the project in focus on this paper, the very nature of the artwork makes impossible for an analyses based purely in aesthetic terms (Nunez. 2006 p3). We should also note that this paper is valued not only as an academic piece of writing, but also as an important practical tool for situating ones’ work. Without the help of this exercise it becomes hard to define and situate Ars Systematis within contemporary art practice.
Informed by our initial commentary on the nature of context, this paper will divide itself in three sections: As mentioned above, the first section is dedicated at the definition of Ars Systematis as an artwork. Section two, on the other hand, is based on the observations of section one and searches for Ars Systematis contemporary relatives. Finally, looking at the relations found on section two, our third section will schematically draw a line on the most important and urgent issues presented throughout the text.


1- Ars Systematis informed

Shaped by a reaction against purely aesthetic propositions in conceptual art, Ars Systematis aims “interactive metaphors as a way of communicating by non-visual means ideas or concepts” (Nunez. 2006 p2). Rather than belonging to a certain class of object or medium, Ars Systematis is characterized by its’ emphasis on concept. It does not have a predetermined medium per se; instead, it has a self-conscious set of parameters and functions.
The first artwork to appear from Ars Systematis is The Nature of Speech (2007 Working title). Proposed initially as a part of my first proposal for Ars Systematis, this artwork embodies all the features described on the same text (Nunez. 2006). For practical reasons related to the nature of our exercise, the contextualization of my own practice, we will use The Nature of Speech as an example of Ars Systematis. The use of a single artwork not only further objectifies our study but also supports Ars Systematis with a (multi) medium.
In The Nature of Speech the medium(s) depicts a system based on observations regarding the nature of speech and the written word. Intended to be a commentary on the relations of speech, power, information and ethics, The Nature follows the line of thought better exemplified and beautifully drawn by Pierre Clastres in his 1974 book, Society against the State:

“To speak is above all to possess the power to speak. Or again, the exercise of power ensures the domination of speech: only the masters can speak. As for the subjects: they are bound to the silence of respect, reverence or terror. Speech and power maintain relations such that the desire for one is fulfilled on the quest of the other. Whether prince, despot, or commander-in-chief, the man of power is always not only the man who speaks, but the sole source of legitimate speech: an impoverished speech, a poor speech to be sure, but one rich in efficiency, for it goes by the name command and wants nothings save the obedience of the executant. Static extremes in themselves, power and speech owe their continued existence to one another; each is the substance of the other, and the persistence of their coupling, while it appears to transcend history, yet fuels the movement of history: there is a historical event when - once what keeps them separate, hence dooms them to non-existence, has been done away with - power and speech are founded in the very act of their meeting. To take power is to win speech” (1974 p128).

The relational system in which Clastres focus is not visually represented in The Nature of Speech. Despite being metaphorically materialized by a book, speech is not pictographically represented at the installation. Nor is there a representation of “power” to be observed. Instead, the relation between power and its’ subjects are at the same time performed and felt by the observer. The painful sound that silence and assault the observer is, at the same time, ones’ speech and power. Space becomes a metaphor for ones’ behavioural attitude towards the speaker/speech: you can either confront, conform or posses it according to your spatial position. Morally more complicated, however, is the dilemma faced by the person who chooses to control speech and/or examine knowledge. This person can, by the simple act of closing the book, silence all speech and difference on the room.
Despite formal and sensual differences, all mediums are semantically related in The Nature. If taken apart and observed in isolation, the different mediums employed by the installation would not relate to each other and, consequently, to the system. Our question here is not to purely investigate the properties inherent on each particular medium. Commenting on the possibilities of sound as an artistic medium, a similar argument is raised by Gerald Hartnett. On an editorial for Leonardo Music Journal Hartnett states that:

Outside of representing - i.e. inventing - social and historical determinations, sound objects are themselves indeed as empty of referential capacity as music itself. This is where arguments that privilege the "materiality" of sound over music falter, and it is also precisely why sophisticated, interesting audio art depends upon producing an economy of difference through a tactic of textual positioning that is only capable of being effected by including recorded speech (in the case of radio art) or by locating "sound/noise" in a proximity to objects/images (in the case of installation work and film produced [with] in sound) (1996 p4).

Despite our distinct vocabularies, we can recognize that his “ economy of difference through a tactic of textual positioning” is, in reality, the force behind that semantic bound between different mediums. It may be that the very “modular” (Manovich. 2001 p30) nature of new media requires such composition with mediums. Placed at the heart of the artwork, new digital media is responsible for processing and controlling other mediums. Following its’ parameters (the system), the installation process the information given by its’ audience. In any given scenario, however, the installation is always dependant on information; the system that the artwork represents is simultaneously informed and based on pure information. For all its’ qualities, both formal and theoretical, The Nature of Speech is a clear example of new digital media artwork. Dependant on information materialized by bits and electrical currents, this hybrid artwork and its’ line of thought, Ars Systematis, is just but one example of a much wider phenomena.