Abstracting 'Art and Fear'

Paul Virilio, Art and Fear (London, England: Continuum, 2006).

Art and Fear, written by Paul Virilio, is composed of two essays ‘Pitiless Art and ‘Silence on Trail’. In these essays Virilio explores the position of contemporary art in the wake of Auschwitz and the implications of war on artistic sensibility and modes of perception. Based on a model of destruction, Virilio discusses the relationship between the aesthetic repercussions of war and the evaluation of what he coins ‘the ethical dilemma of silence’. As a continuum to discussions centered on ‘the aesthetics of disappearance’ Virilio makes connection between the desolation of modern times (as a result of the horror of human violence) and the aesthetics of disappearance in representative art. Employing theories of philosophy and modern art Virilio seeks to identify and deconstruct the manifestation of the ‘pitiful’ work of art in the 20th Century.

Virilo begins his essay by offering the reader a brief sketch of artists and pivotal art movements beginning post Auschwitz and draws parallels between the dehumanizing aspects of war, particularly the potential for mass genocide to the subsequent aesthetic tendencies in contemporary art. Virilio goes on to explore this ‘balance of terror’ and the inclination of 20th Century art as it anticipates humanities own destruction. Virlio deems that the popularization of terrorism through the mass media and new technologies results in the ‘pitiless’ artist or author adopting a mode of assimilation and regurgitation of academicism that ultimately seeks to attack symbols, signs and the very essence of meaning.

Virilio makes claim that the decline of representation in modern art results in the emergence of a ‘presentative’ art – namely artworks that are able to be known without any reflective of cognitive process. Virlio’s arguments are extremely politically charged as he continually aligns the decline of representation in contemporary art to the decline of a representative democracy in favor of a virtual democracy ruled by public opinion and dictated by the media. Ultimately Virilio aligns this trend of representative disappearance with Fascism.

Exploring the notion of ‘Terminal Art’ Virilio speaks of the nihilism of contemporary technology and the consumer fascination with ‘terrorist voyeurism’ -namely the tendency and desire to view and record the tortured body .Virilio views this morbid lure with the tortured body before the apparatus as the ultimate manifestation of aesthetic perspectives built on a model of war which is then subsequently manipulated by the mass media and ‘the vision of excess’. The elimination of nature in art is replaced by the alignment of science and art. Virilio perceives the body as the new frontier for quasi artistic/ scientific interrogation which permits biology a new artistic expressionism. Thus cloning becomes a form of extreme art. Virilio questions the consequences of this ‘scientific expression’ as it enjoys the privilege of a freedom usually relegated to artistic expression – expressionism without any limits, moral or ethical.

In the second essay ‘Silence on Trial’ Virlio extends the discussion of the audio- visual explosion and its ramifications of the image synchronized with sound. Tracking the development of the moving image and film, Virilio explores the nature of simulacrum and how our sense of ‘exposure time’ has been altered due to the development of film. Virilio tracks the evolution of conceptual art amidst the backdrop of a ‘noisy mass media’ and how the manipulation of media into propaganda seeks to silence the masses. The essence of this essay relies on the following quote ‘everything that remains silent is deemed to consent’ or ‘whoever says nothing is deemed to consent’. Virilo investigates how the cloning of images and the continual erasure of lines between art forms results in a total art or a global art that places emphasis purely on the communicative aspect of art resulting in the destruction of the traditional nature of art. Virilio perceives this shift and development of a new art and equates it with a new perceptual reality based on media domination which relies on the conditioning reflex of a mass media – the media of hate.

The key concepts employed by Virilio and central to this work as follows:
1. The Aesthetics of Disappearance - A term used to describe the trend in contemporary art in the wake of Auschwitz which seeks to eliminate the human body or traces of representation in favor of abstraction. Virilio also equates this tendency to the preference of virtual realties or virtual dominance over a real presence.
2. Pitiless/ Pitiful Work of Art – Contemporary art which lacks the quality of pity and is severe to the highest degree.
3. Terrorism/ Total War – The popularization of terrorism by the mass media which results in the conditioning of perspectives derived from a model of war. Virilio refers to total war in regards to the mass media as being the new virtual battlefield.
4. Representative art v’s Presentative art- The claim that the demise of representation in contemporary art is aligned to a political agenda. The shift from artworks that embody symbolic meaning to works that are dictated by public opinion and require little cognitive process.
5. Terminal Art – Contemporary trend which favors the mobility of humanities decline – specifically in relation to the tortured body before technological apparatus.
6. Extreme Art – The melding of art and science which sees the expansion of scientific expression to encompass the freedom of possibilities usually relegated to artistic expression.

Art and Fear is the result of a talk given by Virilio and was subsequently developed into text. Virilio’s research methods are not immediately apparent; there are no obvious research methods in terms of quantifiable data (interviews etc) as Virilo is essentially elaborating on a discourse which has its basis in media theory and cultural analysis. Virilio uses the model of Auschwitz as an aesthetic possibility for the foundation of his argument and cites various artists and theorists to further elaborate his case. When reading Art and Fear one is thoroughly convinced of Virlio’s claim. His use of language and the way he relates key concepts to his core theme is both compelling and insightful (though at times a little disturbing).

Perhaps one of the biggest limitations of Art and Fear is Virilio’s assumption of prior knowledge of the reader. At times his terms and ideas are quite dense and are difficult to absorb, especially if one does not already have a thorough knowledge of the subject matter, namely a perspective of art history or of cultural, post-structural theory. Though Virilio uses a host of examples to illustrate his argument, they tend to be somewhat narrow in terms of their intellectual specificity and those outside the field of enquiry may find it difficult to digest.

Paul Virilo is a contemporary theorist writing on one of the most pressing concerns facing humanity today in terms of information exchange and the consequences of the excesses of mass media. Building on the intellectual discussions instigated by Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, it is difficult to ascertain the impact of Virilio as his theories are so present in the ‘now’. There is no safe distance at which one can reflect on his contributions to the field as he is in the process of redefining it.