Workbooks/MIT PRESS 2010
The recent anthology, salve Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else (AEEE), web edited by Esther Choi and Marikka Trotter explores the anxious state of architectural thought and practice. Choi and Trotter have compiled a notable list of thinkers and practitioners to interrogate the current moment in architecture. The dialogues flow from four trajectories: What is the future of the architectural discipline? What is the state of post-criticality? What are contemporary and future ways of architectural critique and theorizing, and how can architectural discourse apply to adjacent fields of study? These questions are represented through a series of seven conversations and nine hand-picked essays. The editors attempt to weave a coherent survey from a broad range of discussion topics and formats. Many of their choices are successful; however the results vary in quality.
In the introductory dialogue readers are confronted with the idea that the discipline of architecture is at a cross-roads and its very future is in question. This is by no means a new question as Architecture’s agnosticism in incorporating diverse ideas into built forms is essential to its practice. But the authors ask if this agnosticism has taken the discipline to a place where it can no longer define itself? The incorporation of ideas and trends from philosophy, psychology, environmental sciences, mathematics, and engineering have served the creation and description of novel forms while simultaneously obscuring rigid disciplinary boundaries of architecture. The recent history of academic and professional disciplines has moved towards interdisciplinary praxes—such as the spatial and linguistic turns that occurred in the liberal arts and social sciences. An increased interest in interdisciplinary approaches emerged from the realization that any specialized field’s self-contained body of knowledge is limited and incomplete, only remedied by being open to other modes of working and thinking. The question remains, does architecture, more than other disciplines desperately desire to be something that it is not?
This search for distinctive meaning in the discipline happens at a time when the practice of architecture is also in doubt. With less and less demand for architects, there are ever increasing numbers of people coming out of architectural schools without employment or clear purpose. However the practice of architecture is still a vital part of cultural production and it may prove true that the world has too many architects but not enough people who understand architectural thinking. There is a constant tension between the unique habits of mind and training that comes with architectural practice and the increasing reality that architects are becoming unnecessary.
AEEE includes contributions from a number of contemporary architectural thinkers, teachers, and practitioners. However nearly half of the contributors (seven of the seventeen) have an affiliation with Harvard Graduate School of Design, and only one person is from outside of North America and Western Europe. Due to these limiting factors, there is great potential for institutional myopia; however any adverse affects are not readily apparent in the text. What this text highlights is the presence of a generational divide between the authors, not an explicit conflict between older and younger architects, but a clear and perceptible distinction between the two. Younger contributors (namely Choi, Albert, and Trotter) write like they have something to prove, parts their discussions leaning towards the unnecessarily cerebral and disjointed. Most of the conversations consisted of more developed dialogues, unfortunately others like the Albert/Lavin conversation are cut short and not given the space to develop. Certain sections could have been expanded or left out but not published in its current format.
The most consistent message throughout this text is that architecture is struggling to find its place among various disciplines. There is an eagerness to claim insights and language from other fields, as if architecture needs external justification for its existence. Architecture’s over-reliance on obtuse language and half-digested theories has led to difficulties in describing its meaning, theory becoming just a screen thrown over mediocre, repetitive, or opulent constructions.
A large portion of AEEE situates itself uncomfortably in the middle of the decades-long debate of critical, “restive” architecture versus post-critical “cool” architecture, with one side represented by K Michael Hays and Peter Eisenman and the other by people like Rem Koolhaus, Robert Somol, Sarah Witting, and later Sylvia Lavin. Both Hays and Lavin are featured in the interviews featured in the book. It has been nearly twenty-seven years since K Michael Hays wrote Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form [1] and equally as long for a new generation of post-critical architects to rise to stardom. Also in this time period was the collapse of the Soviet Union, captalism’s premature and triumphal “end of history,” a complete reshaping of the global economic system. and multiple boom and bust economic cycles. Kazys Varnelis in a short but cogent post from 2008 declared the collapse of post-critical architecture, speculating that the collapse of the global economy will cause architects to reevaluate “Koolhaas’s injunction that the architect should surf the waves of capital.” [2] The supposed conflict of critical architecture versus post-critical architecture is a debate that should have been resolved by now, but curiously continues to play out in the pages of AEEE.
To frame the debate roughly is as follows: Modernism had a specific utopian programme and Critical architecture, like many post-1968 sought to liberate everything from the master narrative. The emergence of post-modernism, of Deconstructivism [3], and the Linguistic turn in the social sciences reflected the response of architects and theorists to break with the past. But as argued by the post-critics the critical architects held onto the idea of architectures ability to be transformative and/or programmatic. The post-critics claim was that this stifled creativity and made architects focus on the ephemeral and theoretical aspects, thereby giving more power to a narrative layer on top of buildings than the buildings themselves. Instead, the post-critical architects advocated for a surface and formalist reading of architecture, often anti-theoretical, and what emerged was the embracing of capital and architects advocating a collaborationist “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude. There is a false dichotomy here because big-A architecture does not exist without capital. So for a certain number of the post-critical architects, they serve in a way as apologists but the critical architects are just as complicit.
One important notion that bridges this gap between the critical and post-critical is the idea of autonomy. Autonomy exists both in the architecture itself and the architect. These two are connected but also contingent. Objects have a life of their own outside of any programmatic or ideological leanings of its designer or builder and architects have all sorts of ideas, proclivities, and ideological influences that may or may not see their way into the work. The material presence, internal logic, affective resonances, and environmental impacts are elements that an architect can consider and plan or alternatively can be completely missed.
Like it or not, architecture is inherently conservative. Acts of building and designing take specialized training and the subsequent specialization lends itself to a very isolated worldview. This does not mean that architectural practitioners are politically or socially conservative. Quite the opposite is true. But a certain degree of realism, a certain degree of cooperation or concession-making is a necessary component in the practice of architecture. A new generation of architects faces a critical juncture if this book is any indicator. They will face a diminished field with less direct opportunities for their formal training. Architectural training is broad enough to prepare practitioners for any contingencies and though certain skill sets may prove useless, others will provide tools for engagement. Architects will have to navigate through new territory adding to and jettisoning models of thought that may be hindering as they move forward into the unknown.
- [1] K. Michael Hays, Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form. Perspecta vol. 21 (1984) 14-29.
- [2] http://varnelis.net/blog/the_postcritical_collapse
- [3] Deconstructivism was a brief movement in post-modern architecture concerned with assembleges of parts rather than integrity of the whole. This was also coupled with an obsession with philosopher Jacques Derrida.
Workbooks/MIT PRESS 2010
The recent anthology, generic Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else (AEEE), cure edited by Esther Choi and Marikka Trotter explores the anxious state of architectural thought and practice. Choi and Trotter have compiled a notable list of thinkers and practitioners to interrogate the current moment in architecture. The dialogues flow from four trajectories: What is the future of the architectural discipline? What is the state of post-criticality? What are contemporary and future ways of architectural critique and theorizing, sale and how can architectural discourse apply to adjacent fields of study? These questions are represented through a series of seven conversations and nine hand-picked essays. The editors attempt to weave a coherent survey from a broad range of discussion topics and formats. Many of their choices are successful; however the results vary in quality.
In the introductory dialogue readers are confronted with the idea that the discipline of architecture is at a cross-roads and its very future is in question. This is by no means a new question as Architecture’s agnosticism in incorporating diverse ideas into built forms is essential to its practice. But the authors ask if this agnosticism has taken the discipline to a place where it can no longer define itself? The incorporation of ideas and trends from philosophy, psychology, environmental sciences, mathematics, and engineering have served the creation and description of novel forms while simultaneously obscuring rigid disciplinary boundaries of architecture. The recent history of academic and professional disciplines has moved towards interdisciplinary praxes—such as the spatial and linguistic turns that occurred in the liberal arts and social sciences. An increased interest in interdisciplinary approaches emerged from the realization that any specialized field’s self-contained body of knowledge is limited and incomplete, only remedied by being open to other modes of working and thinking. The question remains, does architecture, more than other disciplines desperately desire to be something that it is not?
This search for distinctive meaning in the discipline happens at a time when the practice of architecture is also in doubt. With less and less demand for architects, there are ever increasing numbers of people coming out of architectural schools without employment or clear purpose. However the practice of architecture is still a vital part of cultural production and it may prove true that the world has too many architects but not enough people who understand architectural thinking. There is a constant tension between the unique habits of mind and training that comes with architectural practice and the increasing reality that architects are becoming unnecessary.
AEEE includes contributions from a number of contemporary architectural thinkers, teachers, and practitioners. However nearly half of the contributors (seven of the seventeen) have an affiliation with Harvard Graduate School of Design, and only one person is from outside of North America and Western Europe. Due to these limiting factors, there is great potential for institutional myopia; however any adverse affects are not readily apparent in the text. What this text highlights is the presence of a generational divide between the authors, not an explicit conflict between older and younger architects, but a clear and perceptible distinction between the two. Younger contributors (namely Choi, Albert, and Trotter) write like they have something to prove, parts their discussions leaning towards the unnecessarily cerebral and disjointed. Most of the conversations consisted of more developed dialogues, unfortunately others like the Albert/Lavin conversation are cut short and not given the space to develop. Certain sections could have been expanded or left out but not published in its current format.
The most consistent message throughout this text is that architecture is struggling to find its place among various disciplines. There is an eagerness to claim insights and language from other fields, as if architecture needs external justification for its existence. Architecture’s over-reliance on obtuse language and half-digested theories has led to difficulties in describing its meaning, theory becoming just a screen thrown over mediocre, repetitive, or opulent constructions.
A large portion of AEEE situates itself uncomfortably in the middle of the decades-long debate of critical, “restive” architecture versus post-critical “cool” architecture, with one side represented by K Michael Hays and Peter Eisenman and the other by people like Rem Koolhaus, Robert Somol, Sarah Witting, and later Sylvia Lavin. Both Hays and Lavin are featured in the interviews featured in the book. It has been nearly twenty-seven years since K Michael Hays wrote Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form [1] and equally as long for a new generation of post-critical architects to rise to stardom. Also in this time period was the collapse of the Soviet Union, captalism’s premature and triumphal “end of history,” a complete reshaping of the global economic system. and multiple boom and bust economic cycles. Kazys Varnelis in a short but cogent post from 2008 declared the collapse of post-critical architecture, speculating that the collapse of the global economy will cause architects to reevaluate “Koolhaas’s injunction that the architect should surf the waves of capital.” [2] The supposed conflict of critical architecture versus post-critical architecture is a debate that should have been resolved by now, but curiously continues to play out in the pages of AEEE.
To frame the debate roughly is as follows: Modernism had a specific utopian programme and Critical architecture, like many post-1968 sought to liberate everything from the master narrative. The emergence of post-modernism, of Deconstructivism [3], and the Linguistic turn in the social sciences reflected the response of architects and theorists to break with the past. But as argued by the post-critics the critical architects held onto the idea of architectures ability to be transformative and/or programmatic. The post-critics claim was that this stifled creativity and made architects focus on the ephemeral and theoretical aspects, thereby giving more power to a narrative layer on top of buildings than the buildings themselves. Instead, the post-critical architects advocated for a surface and formalist reading of architecture, often anti-theoretical, and what emerged was the embracing of capital and architects advocating a collaborationist “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude. There is a false dichotomy here because big-A architecture does not exist without capital. So for a certain number of the post-critical architects, they serve in a way as apologists but the critical architects are just as complicit.
One important notion that bridges this gap between the critical and post-critical is the idea of autonomy. Autonomy exists both in the architecture itself and the architect. These two are connected but also contingent. Objects have a life of their own outside of any programmatic or ideological leanings of its designer or builder and architects have all sorts of ideas, proclivities, and ideological influences that may or may not see their way into the work. The material presence, internal logic, affective resonances, and environmental impacts are elements that an architect can consider and plan or alternatively can be completely missed.
Like it or not, architecture is inherently conservative. Acts of building and designing take specialized training and the subsequent specialization lends itself to a very isolated worldview. This does not mean that architectural practitioners are politically or socially conservative. Quite the opposite is true. But a certain degree of realism, a certain degree of cooperation or concession-making is a necessary component in the practice of architecture. A new generation of architects faces a critical juncture if this book is any indicator. They will face a diminished field with less direct opportunities for their formal training. Architectural training is broad enough to prepare practitioners for any contingencies and though certain skill sets may prove useless, others will provide tools for engagement. Architects will have to navigate through new territory adding to and jettisoning models of thought that may be hindering as they move forward into the unknown.
- [1] K. Michael Hays, Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form. Perspecta vol. 21 (1984) 14-29.
- [2] http://varnelis.net/blog/the_postcritical_collapse
- [3] Deconstructivism was a brief movement in post-modern architecture concerned with assembleges of parts rather than integrity of the whole. This was also coupled with an obsession with philosopher Jacques Derrida.
SFMOMA’s Exposed show was conceptualized and curated by Simon Baker of the Tate Modern and Sandra S. Phillips, cost SFMOMA’s senior photography curator. According to Phillips, doctor “Exposed poses compelling and urgent questions about who is looking at whom, here and why.” The show is roughly organized around five themes: the unseen photographer, celebrity, voyeurism/desire, witnessing violence, and surveillance. “Works by major artists, will be presented alongside photographs made by amateurs, professional journalists, and governmental agencies, exploring the larger cultural significance of voyeurism and surveillance technology.” The description leads one to believe that Exposed will bring some serious and pressing dialogue into a public forum, however the result is mixed and the audience is presented with more of a historical survey of photography than its impact on wider social questions.
Historically speaking, the possibility of recording images without the subject’s knowledge is preceded only by the invention of a recording technology itself. Cameras were immediately deployed to take the images of unwilling or unaware people. When photography enthusiasts quickly encountered or perceived resistance to image taking, they invented ways to make hidden cameras. The Unseen Photographer features a selection of early unpermitted photographs i.e. those taken without the knowledge or consent of the subjects, along with a number of hidden “spy” cameras and devices from these early days. Many of the photographers were the big names of early twentieth century photography—Alfred Steiglitz and Walker Evans notably.
Walker Evans, Subway Passenger, New York, 1941; gelatin silver print; 4 3/4 x 5 3/4 in. (12.07 x 14.61 cm); Collection SFMOMA, fractional and promised gift of Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein; © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
While not wholly uncritical of the “taking” of people’s images, the underlying gaze behind the images highlight the serious class divisions between the subjects and the photographers. Walker Evans stated that he wanted to capture people without masks, in their most unguarded state. This is evident in many of his photographs in his subway series and in the main street scenes in the South. The unguarded image afforded by the subjects yields a striking result in the photographs, however this fascination seemed to have an implicit class-component—the Other-ness of poverty captured and interpreted by the well-to-do. The class-basis of this early photography is evident in all the work in the unseen photographer, and is an observation that goes unmentioned in the show’s written materials
The fascination with Otherness as seen through the lens extends easily to sexuality. The voyeuristic desire that pries into the sex lives of strangers is on display to interrogate. The assembled pieces about voyeurism, desire, the visuality of sex and its accidental or intentional observation appear together without a sense of cohesion. The voyeurism section of Exposed features a large number of women artists and it seems implicitly assumed that the artists are there to critique the male gaze. The result is anything but uniform. The ways of seeing are varied: from cold and clinical, to desiring, to journalistic record and the totally ambiguous—there is no one way of seeing sex or visualizing voyeuristic desire.
Merry Alpern’s images from Dirty Windows (1994) are a strong example of the uncomfortable, illicit seeing of the sex act. She trained her camera on the windows of a “short-stay hotel” and captured the action therein. Her relationship to her subjects is no different than Walker Evans as her goal is to get the subjects unmasked and unaware, again assuming that this makes them more honest subjects of her camera. Her work interestingly brings up the question of labor, the subject of the series are invariably on-the-job working girls. Similarly, Susan Meiselas’ series Carnival Strippers (1971) seeks to document the work lives of strippers working at the carnival. The difference is that her presence is known rather than a mysterious unknown gaze of the voyeur as in Alpern’s work.
Kohei Yoshiyuki’s The Park series (1971)
Kohei Yoshiyuki’s The Park (1971) shows people seeking public sex in a park and the crowds of viewers crawling in the bushes with them. These infra-red photographs watching the watchers makes for a compelling image, and opens a potentially interesting discussion of public sex and surveillance. Would the act of being photographed/observed while watching someone else’s sex act be an additional turn-on or is the anonymity of the peeping-tom its only appeal? There is an ambivalent relationship of subject/viewer in the images in this section: they are neither inherently erotic nor prurient or shocking. The relation between subject and photographer is often cold and mechanical. It is hard to imagine voyeurism without passion, that necessary albeit unknown connection between subject and viewer. Does a photograph taken by a computer have a desire to speak of? Is autonomous surveillance a voyeuristic practice or does voyeurism take intention?
Like the voyeurism of public sex and of peering into the lives of others, the cult of celebrity is fueled by the act of seeing. The history of paparazzi is a sordid history of creating scenes—hunting celebrities like animals to capture their image. Legendary stories and conflicts between celebrities and paparazzi are often more interesting then the photographs that result from these encounters. Paparazzi photographs are usually hurried, poorly lit objects rather than highly aesthetic or technical masterpieces. The usual result of paparazzi intrusions is violence—its most disgusting moment being the death of Princess Diana in a paparazzi-led car-chase. The form that celebrity culture takes is a result of our visual media culture. With the internet, the insatiable thirst for fame appears in strange ways—celebrity sex tapes, Gawker.com, and a myriad of other manifestations.
Most of the aspects that make celebrity culture interesting in this context are ignored and remain unaddressed in Exposed, instead opting for an uninspired historical selection of celebrity photos. Even with work by WeeGee and Richard Avedon, the paparazzi portion of the show feels lacking. One exception is the work of Allison Jackson. Shot in the style of paparazzi but too perfect to be real: her photographs The Queen plays with her Corgis and Jack (Nicholson) Road Rage assaulting a photographer with a golf club. Both are fakes—staged confrontations with imposter celebrities. In her work there is both a critique of celebrity and a critique of the celebrity hunters. Like that of celebrity hunters—war and crime photographers seek to capture those elusive events that shock, provoke, horrify or fascinate.
Alison Jackson, The Queen plays with her Corgies from the series Confidential, 2007; chromogenic print; 16 x 12 in. (40.64 x 30.48 cm); Courtesy the artist and M + B Gallery; © Alison Jackson, courtesy M+B Gallery
Witnessing Violence was paired with the Paparazzi section in the flow of the exhibition featuring scenes of violence. This small section felt inappropriate for a number of reasons. The idea of witnessing violence as a mode-of-seeing could easily fit into the framework of the show. There are plenty of artists who deal with witnessing as a core aspect of their work. The choice of photographs—the decades old war photography on the wall does not guarantee its success in creating the intended dialogue. A show with this material should confront the fact that the US is currently at war. The horror of these images is dulled by its historical status instead of contemporary atrocities. There has been an ongoing debate as to if images of violence desensitize people to violence or whether the opposite is true—that is by facing the horror we become more averse to it and more sensitive and affected by what we see. There are a couple of other reasons that Witnessing Violence does not seem to fit. Firstly, nearly all of work presented was documentary/journalistic photography by people who are not considered artists or consider their work artistic practice. Secondly, there are a number of “photographer unknown” pieces so there is no real way to determine the intent of the creator and hence the “way of seeing” the work. Thirdly, most of the works seemed like War/Gore Porn, not artistic in any good sense and not created with that intent. The other element that needs exposing is in the uncritical use of tortured brown bodies. Most, if not all of the war photos on the wall were of non-Europeans creating, in effect further exoticization and separation from subject and audience.
This is not part of the dialogue that the Exposed show presents. Again the curators omit the exact details and talking points that would make this exhibition thought-provoking rather than an ambiguous collection of images. Of all the sections in Exposed, Witnessing Violence is the least connected to the rest and its omission would have improved the show’s cohesion.
Luckily what brings Exposed full circle is the largest section on Surveillance, showcasing the most variety, humor, thought-provoking, and conceptually rigorous works in the exhibition. Experimental geographer, researcher, and artist, Trevor Paglen has a varied body of work documenting the infrastructure of State surveillance and government black-ops. Two of his photographs are featured here: Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground and The Other Night Sky. Proving Ground is an ethereal photo of a hidden military base, taken at an extreme distance using limit-telephotography appearing almost abstract from the great distance. The Other Night Sky is a striking shot of Half Dome at Yosemite National Park with the streaks of spy satellites visible in the sky. Both pieces are striking not only for Paglen’s technical ability but for his conceptual strength and thoroughly researched execution. Similarly striking is Simon Norfolk’s BBC World Service Atlantic Relay Station at English Bay (2003), a stunning photo of the spiders web of high frequency antenna. Both of these works make visible systems that we civilians are not supposed to see and the resulting photos are hauntingly beautiful, simultaneously specific and abstract.
Trevor Paglen, Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground/Dugway, UT/Distance ~42 miles/10:51 a.m., 2006, 2006; chromogenic print; 50 x 50 in. (127 x 127 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Anonymous Fund purchase; © Trevor Paglen
Another note worthy piece is Triangle (1979) by Croatian artist, Sanja Ivekovic. Her piece (below) contains a short description of a performance along with five photographs. She describes the performance as going out to the balcony, reading, drinking whiskey, and making masturbation motions while General Tito parades through Zagreb. There are police both on the street and watching from the roofs of buildings. Her performance is for them. Her work illustrates the crucial difference between surveillance (observation from above) and sousveillance (observation from below). The difference between sous and sur is a matter of perspective (viewing angle) between the gaze of the authorities versus the gaze of the artist. Through her flippantly defiant performance, she is watching the watchers (the police) and sets herself up to be watched and questioned. There is a playful and resentful feeling that one gets from Ivekovic in this performance.
Sanja Ivekovi? “Triangle”
“The action takes place on the day of the President’s visit to the city, and it develops as intercommunication between three persons:
1. a person on the roof of a tall building across the street from my apartment;
2. myself, on the balcony;
3. a policeman in the street in front of the house.
Due to the cement construction of the balcony, only the person on the roof can actually see me and follow the action. My assumption is that this person has binoculars and a walkie-talkie apparatus. I notice that the policeman in the street also has a walkie-talkie.
The action begins when I walk out onto the balcony and sit on a chair, I sip whiskey, read a book, and make gestures as if I perform masturbation. After a period of time, the policeman rings my doorbell and orders the “persons and objects are to be removed from the balcony.”
(source: Sanja Ivekovi?, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb 1998, S. 27.)
Yoko Ono and John Lennon Film no 6. Rape (1969) and Vito Acconci’s Following(1969) are two classic performance pieces about stalking. In Rape Ono and Lennon hired a film crew to intrude upon a random woman for a day and record her reactions. Following involved Acconci picking out a random person to follow each day for a month, documented it, and sent the resulting document to a various critics and friends.
In the lobby of the museum is a computer-controlled spotlight. The project called Access (2003) created by Marie Sester turned surveillance into an interactive game, allowing a person at the control panel to target and follow people in the lobby with the light. The fun of this piece is observing people’s reactions to the light and seeing if the catch that it is following them. There is a strange pleasure in being the unseen observer at the control panel.
In 2001 the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany curated a show called ctrl[space] about surveillance. The core of pieces in Exposed were also part of ctrl[space] including Acconci, Nauman, Merry Alpern, Bureau of Inverse Technology, and others. The difference between the two shows lies in the clearer and more limited focus on surveillance by the ZKM versus the diffuse and messy collection of modes-of-seeing things illicitly, presented by the SFMOMA/Tate collaboration.
Another area in where Exposed falls short is that it feels like a dated survey of semi-related material then a document of current artistic practices on the subject. Surveillance is increasingly a central part of our everyday lives and is becoming a major topic in the arts. The urgency that Phillips speaks of in the press releases is not present in the show. The bulk of the work comes from before the nineteen-nineties. This is especially glaring in the witness and paparazzi sections where little of the work reflects its relevance to the contemporary moment.
Notably absent in Exposed was the work of Critical Art Ensemble, the Surveillance Camera Players, and more recently, Michael Wolf. Wolf’s large format photographs of people in their offices and tower blocks are intimate and uncanny, giving viewers a rarely seen perspective and violating ones assumed personal privacy. CAE and the Players emerged in the mid-1990’s specifically as a political critique of the control society. These artists explicitly address surveillance’s impact in their writing and objects and would have contributed significantly.
There are a number of laudable elements to Exposed, however, the unevenness of the message and the inclusion of the Witnessing Violence section removes the chance of cohesion. The blurring of fine artist, amateurs, and photojournalists creates an inconsistency of concept and execution. If the goal was to speak broadly of the culture of seeing, then it fails precisely for this breadth. Instead of a broad wide-ranging dialogue, viewers are left with a diffuse and ambiguous message about witnessing illicit events and the public nature of seeing. It is arguably not the role of the museum to spoon-feed ideas or a particular ideological perspective to viewers, however in this particular case the wall text and program materials did not present enough conceptual frameworks to bring the material together and focus a dialogue.
Exposed misses out on lessons learned over the past decade and the uniqueness of our contemporary moment. Interesting questions that come from a cultural analysis of surveillance are only now starting to get interrogated with frequency. This is partially reflected in the changing nature of technology and our relationship with it. With ubiquitous computing and ubiquitous cameras comes ubiquitous surveillance. Younger generations have adapted to always been watched, always performing for an unseen camera. The nature of seeing and being seen has become a generalized and participatory surveillance. Has the transgression of image-taking has been normalized? Has it become the norm to act like you are always being watched or even posing for ones viewers? Crucial questions are being asked and artists offer interesting responses. The current backlash against body scanners at airports has been all over the news and artists are already responding. If only the curators could have incorporated more recent work instead of taking the path of least resistance in choosing work. The lack of clear choices or reasoning as to selection criteria for the show and the vague statements about the subject lead the viewers to a passive stance in regard to what should be controversial and though provoking material. SFMOMA missed a real opportunity to engage the public in a crucial and fascinating dialogue.
Exposed is on display at SFMOMA until April 17th, 2011 and then moving to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.