The Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord
Talking back has undesirable consequences.
The Spectacle is reducing everyones concrete life to a universal speculation.
“You (the corporations) don’t ask me if I want a billboard in every part of where I live. You don’t ask me if I want to hear music everywhere I go and in every restaurant I eat in. So why do I have to ask you to take a little bit of it and make something out of it, make fun or critique you” - Mark Hosler from Negativland
This quote alone shows that our world is controlled by a smaller world of which dictates every image we see. It is up to us to standby and absorb this careful dispersion of information or to take it and respond to it, creating our own noise.
It is the artists who have the ability to sharpen out perception. As artists we see our environments for what they really are. Now more than ever, with the COVID-19 global Pandemic, we are all being made to isolate to one single environment, to entertain ourselves, by ourselves for ourselves but really for the protection of others.
We as artists have the ability to use the spectacles own weapons against it by jamming the system. Right now our means of production are limited to what we have in our environments but our capabilities are limitless through the power of technology, which not only stands a huge advance in the spread of art and ideas but currently during COVID-19, technology stands as the only means of spreading information both non essential social and consumer communication and essential government and ministerial broadcasts.
I found Debords analysis of the spectacle especially significant during these unprecedented times. As I try to adapt to a remote version of Art College and Printmaking, I am learning more about the power of art, critique and the spread of ideas through imagery.
“The Spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual deception produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialised.” -Debord