Closed Loops and the Natural

There are some important parallels between the sculptural works of Susy Oliveira and Brandon Vickerd, and the Marxist critique of capitalism levelled by Nicole Shukin in Rendering’s Modern Logics.

Shukin calls into question the “closed loops” provided by the capitalist model, challenging the way in which we valorize recycling as redemptive and subversive. Analogous to rendering in the meat processing industry, Shukin argues that our mythologies surrounding the recycling industry and its ability to reuse waste “arguably supplements the wasteful hyper–production and consumption of commodities with an ecological ethic of material efficiency and waste recovery that surreptitiously supports the sustainability of capitalism” (70). Rather than calling into question the inherent wastefulness of industrialization (and by analogy, meat processing), recycling and rendering serve to reinforce the “hegemony of capital” by providing a “solution”. Through more efficient recycling, capitalism argues, waste can be reduced and reused and the detrimental effects of mass production mitigated or eliminated.

By providing a closed loop in which waste materials are returned to their “proper place”, “the place where they regenerate as capital” (71), capitalism provides a fake ecology reminiscent of the natural world. Though recycling in capitalism mirrors the cycling of materials in ecosystems, Shukin intelligently points to the way in which profit is suspiciously absent from the equation.

The way in which Susy Oliveira’s polygonal sculptures of natural objects and settings force the viewer to reconsider perception and representations of “the natural” in our society, is reminiscent to me of the core of Shukin’s critique. Shukin argues that appearances aside, there is very little natural about the closed loop provided by capitalism. I would argue that in calling into question what appears natural by way of the illusory effect of the concave head (Have Everything and Die), Susy Oliveira challenges the viewer to be more cognisant of models and narratives claiming naturalness. Likewise, Brandon Vickerd’s sculptural work as a whole seems to embody this critique. Immediate appearances aside, how natural is Phillips’s Park Tree, Bionic Forest, or Root System? In truth, Vickerd seems particularly interested in manufactured replications of the natural, and his work forces the viewer to consider some of the ways these false ecologies are manifest in our society. Even Satellite, though hardly depicting nature or the natural, consciously calls into question our collective capacity for myth creation.

Arguably, it’s a theme shared by other artists of the 2009 CAFK+A biennial. David Diviney’s Lodge, is a particularly good example. Outwardly resembling a beaver dam in the Kitchener bus station fountain, the dam is conspicuously covering a pile of Styrofoam coolers. Again, this is an example of art calling into question manufactured reproductions of natural elements, hinting specifically at the hidden failings of such representations. David himself suggests that his art examines the “pastoral vernacular of folklore, pioneer tales, foundational myths, and other backwoods constructs–outsider art forms, do-it-yourself aesthetics and related activities” (Diviney). This concentration on foundational myth, arguably evident as well in the work of Oliveira and Vickerd, directly connects all three artists to Shukin’s Marxist critique.

Source: Shukin, Nicole. Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times. U Minnesota Press, 2009.

Beckerian Interpretations

Both Brandon Vickerd’s and Susy Oliveira’s sculpture reflect upon the concept of technology as an extension of the self. Technology is often understood as improving upon nature, accomplishing feats that would be impossible to do without it. As Vickerd mentions, to consider technology as nothing more than a tool is inadequate. Indeed, technology has become much more than that – perhaps a type of religion. Ernest Becker, author of The Denial of Death (1973), would argue that in a technoculture such as ours, technology has elevated to the status of the heroic. Becker writes, a mythical hero-system is one:

“in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning…The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count” (5).

And if heroism is a direct result of the terror of death, as Becker argues (11), it makes sense that technology holds so much currency in our society. Technology has consistently proven itself to be more reliable and efficient than humans in innumerable ways; its ubiquity in society alone is surpassed only by our complete reliance upon it. In other words, where in the past religion offered a promise of immortality through a guarantee of a better afterlife, technology now is offering a promise of immortality through a guarantee of an extended and improved present life. What Vickerd seeks to do is to get viewers to consider our technological hero-system, and consider how immortalizing it truly is. But just as Vickerd’s Satellite confronts us with the image of a failed technology-as-hero, Oliveira’s sculpture forces us to consider the limits of our human faculties.

The Nintendo Mii is a prime example of the digitized self.

In Have Everything and Die, Oliveira uses the hollow mask illusion, a form of depth inversion in which a concave object is perceived to be convex when the viewer looks at it from a particular angle. By shedding light on the limits of human perception, she demonstrates the role that illusion has in our understanding of reality and the truth. Illusion also comes into play through the aesthetic form of her work. Oliveira’s sculptural style invokes the pixelated digital renderings reminiscent of early video games and computer graphics. It is certainly a common practice in today’s technoculture to recreate ourselves digitally, sculpting an illusory persona which we use to navigate the cyberworld. This digitized self is constructed in myriad ways, from online profile avatars to the Nintendo Mii. But Oliveira also sculpts digitized versions of nature: flowers, branches, and birds. In doing so, she comments on humans’ paradoxical reaction to both nature and technology; we wield power over both nature and technology but fear that they might overthrow us:

This artistic rendering of the natural through a technological gaze makes us consider the reality of the objects we behold and our relationship to nature in today’s technoculture. Vickerd continues this notion in his work Bionic Forest, a forest of Tom Thomson-inspired trees forged in stainless steel with branches that move robotically. This work in particular comments on “the Canadian tendency to invest our personal and national identity with the notion of landscape…while we participate in it largely through mediated experiences” (Vickerd).

Vickerd’s Satellite and Northern Satellite also force the viewer to suspend their disbelief. Vickerd put painstaking effort into making the satellites as perfect a mimesis as possible, and though upon first glance one might believe that a real satellite has crashed to the ground, one quickly realizes the implausibility of the installation due to their understanding of the natural world. Thus both Oliveira and Vickerd play with illusions in their representations of nature and technology, opening a dialogue that simultaneously reveals the visibility and invisibility of their influence in our lives, and uncovers the limitations of each. If we consider Becker again for a moment, we might cogitate as to the role of illusion in our lives. As Becker writes, “life is possible only with illusions” (189). He goes so far as to say that neurosis can be deduced to the man who “opts out of life because he is having trouble maintaining his illusions about it” (189). To what degree, then, must we rely on illusions to keep our sanity? Moreover, “On what level of illusion does one live?” (Becker 189). Work like Oliveira’s and Vickerd’s ask us these same questions.

Northern Satellite by Brandon Vickerd, 2009

Source: Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press, 1997.

CAFK+A through the Screen of Flesh and Machines

To a degree, many of both Susy Oliveira and Brandon Vickerd’s sculptures concern man-made representations of nature and the natural. This common theme is consistent with a number of the texts discussed in ENGL 793: Necromedia, and in particular, Rodney Brooks’s Flesh and Machines.

Concave Head (Have Everything and Die)

Like her installation in the upper pavilion of City Hall during the CAFK+A biennial, Have Everything And Die, many of Oliveira’s sculptures take on the form of conspicuously polygonal representations of natural objects. Detailed with actual photographs of the natural object depicted, the art invokes the recognition of imperfect representation. In their reminiscently digital forms, aspects of the sculptures appear real, but on the whole, are obviously not. Be it the bouquet Nothing more, nothing less, the natural scene Bird on a log, or The Girl and the Bear, Oliveira’s art seems to invoke our cultural obsession with digital representations of nature, and in their imperfect and jagged rendering, illustrate perhaps the difficulty, if not impossibility, of the task.

In some regard, this theme is shared by much of the work of Brandon Vickerd. Champions of Entropy, composed of two machines “whose sole purpose is to replicate the organic movements of two male deer locked in constant combat” (Vickerd), and Phillip’s Park Tree, a corten steel mimesis of a sapling, are two examples particularly illustrative of this overlap in theme. Satellite, different in the regard that it doesn’t depict mechanized or digitized nature, nevertheless calls into question the infallibility of technology in its “crashed” state.

In Flesh and Machines, Rodney Brooks considers whether humans are more than machine: “We humans are being challenged by machines. Are we more than machine, or can all of our mental abilities, perceptions, intuition, emotions and even spirituality be emulated, equalled, or even surpassed, by machines?“ (Brooks). This question of replication of nature, and in turn precisely that which makes us human is certainly reflected in the work of both Oliveira and Vickerd. In her digitized representations of natural objects, closing in (but not yet there) on the correct shape and appearance of nature, Oliveira seems to remind us of the capabilities of technology in representing our physical realm. This consideration is likewise evident in Vickerd’s constructions, mimetic representations and mechanized recreations of the rut between two bucks, or an emerging sprout. But are we to interpret either artist’s work as indicative of their acceptance of our eventual and unavoidable perfect replication? My interpretation is no. Vickerd seems to stress repeatedly the failings of technology and technological reproductions in his work, life saliently absent in some regard from each sculptures. Champions of Entropy makes no attempt to reproduce any part of the stag beyond the physical characteristics of the rut, Phillip’s Park Tree seems void of life altogether, and Satellite certainly challenges our assumption of the supremacy of technology. Oliveira’s work meanwhile obviously suggests the imperfection of digital reproduction in the rough polygonal representations. Have Everything and Die in particular plays with our perception to drive the point home. Though seemingly convex from the front, its actual concavity becomes apparent as the viewer begins to circle the monolithic head, reminding them of the mind’s capacity to be deceived, while at the same time stressing the imperfection of the representation. Brooks certainly wouldn’t agree with the assessment of the two artists, however. His critique of these views would probably resemble his evaluation of Weizenbaum and Lanier’s statements concerning the specialness of mankind:

“An intelligent machine will call into question one of humankind’s last bastions of specialness, and so they deny, without rational argument, that such a machine could exist. It is intellectually too scary” (Brooks).

Rather than point to the failings in capturing and replicating nature and the natural, Brooks would likely stress the fact that we are collectively closing in.

Source: Brooks, Rodney A. Flesh and Machines: how robots will change us. New York: Pantheon, 2002.

Satellite by Brandon Vickerd

Satellite by Brandon Vickerd

Toronto based sculptor Brandon Vickerd’s submission to this past month’s CAFKA biennial was called Satellite. In Satellite, as in much of his work, Vickerd tries to call into question the overarching metaphors that constitute our shared spaces. In Vickerd’s words “…my goal is to provoke the viewer to question the constructed world they inhabit”. To this end the sculpture is made to resemble an actual satellite crashed in Victoria Park. In the first part of our interview Vickerd talks about how he built his latest piece.

Satellite questions the idea of the hi-tech in both senses of the word. There is an invisible layer of sophisticated technology that we rely on for communication, but that, because it is invisible, does not occupy a primary place in our thinking. Satellite deconstructs the world by pulling a piece of technology from its privileged (and hidden) position and showing it broken in plain site. In our interview Vickerd mentions that the piece is meant to force viewers to call on their own knowledge of reality. After an instant of wondering if there could really be a satellite crashed in the park, the viewer realizes that it would be impossible for the satellite to survive a reentry. This brief moment of incredulity makes the viewer recognize that they do know about this technology though they seldom think of it.

In his book Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, Michael Zimmerman notes that technology acts to circumscribe the limits of our being as humans, however “The cycle of technological humanity…is not completely circumscribed, but instead is (at least in principle) capable of infinite expansion: the technological world can suck all things into its labor processes” (198). So the cycle of technological humanity is not limited in its scope, but in how it can relate to things in the world; this is important in terms of Heidegger’s thought. For Heidegger humanity has been given a destiny (but not an inescapable one) that calls on them to relate with objects in the world, and to discover the different ways in which they exist in the world: “Freedom is the realm of the destining that at any given time starts a revealing upon its way” (25). In our drive to discover the world in which we live, we have narrowed what it means to exist in that world. Satellite explores this tension in that it does not explicitly criticize the technology that it emulates, but does allow us to question technology as the only tool for extending our knowledge of the world.

Sources:

Zimmerman, Michael. Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.

Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology”.