Tom Raworth, a British poet who is often associated with American Black Mountain and New York School traditions of writing, created this compelling visual document some months ago. I find it visually provocative, the extended hand leading viewers through diverse environments around the U. K. I showed this last spring, however, to a poetry class I was teaching, and most of my students responded with a more polite version of, “what the fuck?”
I pointed out that there was very little visual mediation in the video, and that viewers were therefore asked to think about the potential arguments therein. I also pointed out that “Hands” documented visual space by framing the author’s hand, thereby establishing a narrative device by which meaning could be generated, and thereby argued.
In a poem called “Tracking (notes)” Raworth argues for a vision of art that is generative, expansive—linked as interlinear environments wherein thought and sensation commingle. Art, if I understand him correctly, let’s us make connections, expanding capacities of perception to include diverse modalities of public and private experience. “[T]hings of your time,” he writes, “are influenced by the past. the artist can / only go on from there and use the situation as it is: anything /else is distortion.” This attention to “the situation as it is” brings art into a rhetorical realm, for in it Raworth attends the phenomenal event as dramatic aperture—an experience of time and of being is elaborated in the details of the world around us. “[I] stick with deKooning saying 'i influence the past,’” continues Raworth, “and it is / not important for the work of a time to be available in the / mass media of its time: think of dickens on film, dostoevsky / on radio.”
It is curious to note, however, similarities between Raworth’s “Hands” and a McDonald’s commercial that came out over the summer. Here’s the ad:
I doubt my students would drop their jaws with “WTF” comments if I presented them with these commercial images, although they are weirdly similar to Raworth’s. Perhaps we can accept avant-garde imagery and technique if mediated by forces of technology that reinforce our understanding of a visual commonplace. Work like Raworth’s, by contrast, challenges the stock assumptions we hold, asking us to look at the world with new eyes—and to see ourselves in it through other perspectives. McDonald’s, by contrast, wants to limit perspective, and thereby increase control, if briefly, over our sense of things. It’s not news that commercials work as propaganda—limiting perspectives in order to orient attention to products. But there is a kind of violent invasion into the trove of our collective symbolic imagery when such is manipulated to devalue experience in order to sell shit. And it isn’t just a new coffee drink that’s being sold either. McDonald’s reinforces visio-cultural habits that can prevent us from more carefully apprehending the nature of visual experience.
Submitted by kathrynjeanhamilton on Tue, 2008-11-11 15:54.
It's really interesting to me how similar Raworth's art and the McDonald's ad are, but I'm not sure I agree that the McDonald's ad limits perspective while Raworth's opens it up. I can see how the profit motive taints the otherwise intriguing journey of one coffee drink, but how is McDonald's reinforcing "visio-cultural habits that can prevent us from more carefully apprehending the nature of visual experience"? What kinds of habits of looking and seeing do you think the ad reinforces?
Submitted by Molly Hardy on Thu, 2008-11-13 16:57.
One distinct difference btwn the 2, and I am not going to draw any conclusions from it b/c I sort of agree with both of you, is that the McD add offers "direction." A linear "story" emerges as you follow the hand with the cup down the street. In contrast, the images behind Raworth's hand are incredibly disorienting; the hand itself is the only motif to carry you through. Also, the hand at times holds different objects in it. Moreover, it is never pointing. I experienced a pleasing frustration while I watched the Raworth piece, wondering what does he want me looking out? I was dying for a direction, a pointer finger. Perhaps that is my own version of "WTF," Dale, but as I say, I enjoyed the frustration of disorientation.
I think also if you consider Raworth's work in the context of other experimental film makers--notably Stan Brakage--you can see how narrative is something imposed by the viewer rather than being necessarily composed by the artist. Perhaps any extension of image next to other images creates a kind of narrative (this “serial” structure has been used successfully by many poets, including Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and others)--though one devoid of specific intent. This is something I struggle with when writing about poetry for an audience unused to the motives of experimental art. As a rhetorician, I feel like any experimental narrative in print, sound, or word should make sense to an audience unfamiliar with the larger contexts that made it. Anyway, contemporary advertising leans heavily on avant-garde strategies of composition--using techniques of Dadaism and Surrealism, among others. Even our orientation to the multi-imag-text screens of CNN has a narrative history in modernist art. It's interesting to me though, Molly, to think about how an audience can be oriented (or not) to a text or image. There's something here I need to work out--"disorientation" is a crucial problem. Perhaps the ontological bias in a lot of modernist art creates a sense of disorientation that differs from the other kinds of (dis)orientation available through message-based texts? Of course, theories of the sublime and it's particular modes of appeal might be another way into Raworth's rhetorical strategy--a kind of adaptation of Longinus in the UK?
Anyway, thinking out loud here, as I'm prone to do....
Kathryn, thanks for your note. I'll think about this some more and get back with you, but off the top of my head I think the major symbolic force of the McD ad is contributed by the golden arches on the plastic cup. That image mediates practically every frame for viewers. Also, the coffee drink thingie in the plastic cup is gradually consumed during the video--reinforcing notions of consumption--not just of the drink--but of the commercial. Those two narrative indicators bring attention away from the urban setting through which the drink moves, until the smiling woman at the end of the video greets the unknown cup-holder.
All of this is to say that the narrative is contained--mediated--for viewers in ways the Raworth video is not. There are fewer options for the viewer in terms of perspective because the arches remind you of only one perspective--consumption--and rewards you with that appealing smile. Nothing wrong with this--it's just kind of boring and totalitarian and manipulative--it doesn't challenge our capacities for reading visual narrative. But "visio-cultural habits" is a phrase that only a pedantic doofus would dare use. What was I thinking? Grrr.
Comments
question for Dale
It's really interesting to me how similar Raworth's art and the McDonald's ad are, but I'm not sure I agree that the McDonald's ad limits perspective while Raworth's opens it up. I can see how the profit motive taints the otherwise intriguing journey of one coffee drink, but how is McDonald's reinforcing "visio-cultural habits that can prevent us from more carefully apprehending the nature of visual experience"? What kinds of habits of looking and seeing do you think the ad reinforces?
Direction
One distinct difference btwn the 2, and I am not going to draw any conclusions from it b/c I sort of agree with both of you, is that the McD add offers "direction." A linear "story" emerges as you follow the hand with the cup down the street. In contrast, the images behind Raworth's hand are incredibly disorienting; the hand itself is the only motif to carry you through. Also, the hand at times holds different objects in it. Moreover, it is never pointing. I experienced a pleasing frustration while I watched the Raworth piece, wondering what does he want me looking out? I was dying for a direction, a pointer finger. Perhaps that is my own version of "WTF," Dale, but as I say, I enjoyed the frustration of disorientation.
I think also if you consider
I think also if you consider Raworth's work in the context of other experimental film makers--notably Stan Brakage--you can see how narrative is something imposed by the viewer rather than being necessarily composed by the artist. Perhaps any extension of image next to other images creates a kind of narrative (this “serial” structure has been used successfully by many poets, including Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and others)--though one devoid of specific intent. This is something I struggle with when writing about poetry for an audience unused to the motives of experimental art. As a rhetorician, I feel like any experimental narrative in print, sound, or word should make sense to an audience unfamiliar with the larger contexts that made it. Anyway, contemporary advertising leans heavily on avant-garde strategies of composition--using techniques of Dadaism and Surrealism, among others. Even our orientation to the multi-imag-text screens of CNN has a narrative history in modernist art. It's interesting to me though, Molly, to think about how an audience can be oriented (or not) to a text or image. There's something here I need to work out--"disorientation" is a crucial problem. Perhaps the ontological bias in a lot of modernist art creates a sense of disorientation that differs from the other kinds of (dis)orientation available through message-based texts? Of course, theories of the sublime and it's particular modes of appeal might be another way into Raworth's rhetorical strategy--a kind of adaptation of Longinus in the UK?
Anyway, thinking out loud here, as I'm prone to do....
Kathryn, thanks for your
Kathryn, thanks for your note. I'll think about this some more and get back with you, but off the top of my head I think the major symbolic force of the McD ad is contributed by the golden arches on the plastic cup. That image mediates practically every frame for viewers. Also, the coffee drink thingie in the plastic cup is gradually consumed during the video--reinforcing notions of consumption--not just of the drink--but of the commercial. Those two narrative indicators bring attention away from the urban setting through which the drink moves, until the smiling woman at the end of the video greets the unknown cup-holder.
All of this is to say that the narrative is contained--mediated--for viewers in ways the Raworth video is not. There are fewer options for the viewer in terms of perspective because the arches remind you of only one perspective--consumption--and rewards you with that appealing smile. Nothing wrong with this--it's just kind of boring and totalitarian and manipulative--it doesn't challenge our capacities for reading visual narrative. But "visio-cultural habits" is a phrase that only a pedantic doofus would dare use. What was I thinking? Grrr.