Posts Tagged ‘future’

Philosophical debate on Utopia and Progress

Usually, philosophical debates are organised around a specific question and maybe some philosophical texts. In this case, I wanted to organise a philosophical debate around some of the videos of the exhibition. I knew that the theme of Utopia and Progress was too vast to be completely discussed, so I considered the debate to be an introduction to the subject. The purpose of the debate was to introduce the main aspects around Utopia and Progress, show some great videos related to the theme, to inspire the audience and to get them thinking more about the subject.

Next: Children’s Art Day at the WRF

Everyone listening at the story of the second group.

The main challenge for the storyboarding workshop of the Children’s Art Day was to organise an activity children enjoy but to still convey what the exhibition is about. The Design for Dreaming video worked very well because it was made originally for a family audience and a lot of what is happening is accessible for kids. It remains that the video is an utopian vision on consumerism from the 60s that children don’t have much the occasion to see.

I wanted initially to include the use of the Windows Movie Player software in the workshop. But it wasn’t possible in an hour, and the main focus was to teach how to collaboratively invent a storyboard.

Next: Online exhibition

I decided for the online version of the exhibition to follow the same structure than on the physical exhibition and to make one page per screen, showing all the videos that were displayed on the screen and showing exactly the same legends. Showing one video per page would have probably deconstructed too much the exhibition and undermined the dialogue I wanted to generate between videos. Putting all videos on one page would have been too long to digest on a single web page.

I added a link on each page to my own analysis of the videos. This way, only the visitors willing to know more about my perception of the videos, at the risk of altering their own judgement, can see the information.

Next: Federate around the project

The curatorial practice is not only about setting up the theoretical framework of an exhibition, writing and selecting artefacts. It is also about federating people around a project they understand is beneficial for them. Dreams of Progress was my first exhibition, it gave me the opportunity to gain experience on every front:

• Getting the permissions from artists to display their work and getting additional material. Overall, I got the permission to use all the work I wanted to use but the artists’ responsiveness was really varied. Some were excited about the project and very supportive, some had to be reminded many times before delivering their part.

• Getting permission from Microsoft and Squint/opera. This was very easy and I got all the help I needed in obtaining the dvds. Utopian visions from corporations generate a lot of criticism in the public but corporations seemed to be very open to discussion. This experience made me less cynical about their views as they make the first move after all.

• Finding a venue, the Westminster Reference Library, and then a sponsor for some the video equipment, Westminster Arts.
• Marketing the exhibition by sending the press release to art websites (it was featured on www.artrabbit.com and www.criticalnetwork.co.uk), distributing flyers to venues around the exhibition, putting posters in the Library.
• Marketing the philosophical debate by contacting the philosophical groups in London, philosophical colleges, members of the library, putting the event on facebook, upcoming, eventful.

The video ‘To New Horizons’ from General Motors (1940) depicts a high-tech world where novelty, efficiency and order are the main measures of success. It doesn’t show any people but only mega-structures and highways. The video is especially interesting because General Motors has been bankrupted just few months ago, after 79 years of activity. Could this be because its vision for the future was wrong or because GM failed to deliver it? After viewing the video, both of these statements could be true. GM already attempted to address environmental concerns, promising cities where people could breath fresh air. Something they didn’t deliver. GM planned to group buildings within a city according to their functions (offices, homes, factories). Constructing cities in this way has led to social disruptions which have been difficult to heal. I would compare the video to ‘Utopia’ by Thomas More, because both utopias are highly planned and focussed on efficiency. They both respond to the need to distribute a limited amount of resource (agriculture, jobs, energy) to everyone. In a sense, they are closer to socialism than contemporary utopias, where third world and poverty are often omitted in the high-tech aspirations for the future. One contradiction to notice in the video is the praise of both novelty and efficiency. By nature, reaching efficiency is a stable equilibrium that doesn’t like novelty, as novelty requires adaptations. A perfectly efficient world doesn’t need novelty.

The “Century 21 Calling” from AT&T (1964) advocates technological progress but does so by depicting middle class people and their domestic problems. Progress in science is justified because it can improve standards of living. Belief in technology serves as a way to avoid challenging the social rules of the USA in the 60s, e.g. the condition of women. The assumption is that technology will resolve everything anyway.  The Bell System, a national switchboard can manage connections between phones which in turn saved consumers time, energy and made their life easier. The switchboard is likened to an electronic brain. The idea that consumerism and technology will solve all of our problem dates back from the industrial revolution. It was an idea that was already well established at the 1900 World Fair of Paris (see the book Dreams of Peace and Freedom by Jay Winter). Consumerism and technology underpin the values behind Walt Disney World, built at around the same time (see the book  Vinyl Leaves by Stephen M. Fjellman). The AT&T video looks like a propaganda movie; the characters conform to the ideal of what America should look like. The “Century 21 Calling” may or may not be propaganda. It might have been expressed spontaneously by those having no interest in changing American ideals, or by the people without enough courage to reconsider their social framework.

“Future of Cities” from the Danish Royal Academy of Architecture (squint/opera, 2007) introduces themes related to libertarian socialism, environmentalism and post-modernism. The future looks like a collage of seemingly independent communities from diverse ethnicities and  cultural backgrounds. Sustainability and nature are at the centre of their social projects. However, the multiform buildings covered with trees and grass are massive. They could not possibly be built by a small community. Life and apparent organic disorder is actually planned and optimised. The video gives somehow the impression that big corporations are necessary in this global network of small communities. It may or may not be true. The end of the video includes a biblical reference to Noah’s Ark; it is worth noting that religion and mythology are a great source of utopias. Take the garden of Eden and the Hindu mythology for example. The “Future of Cities” video was very controversial at the philosophical debate held during the exhibition. Some people felt that its message was closer to a ‘human’ utopia, others thought it was not that different from the other visions and that its humanity was only superficial. Someone also directed me to Transition Towns which is indeed directly connected to the “Future of Cities” vision.

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• Back to the videos
• Curation of the exhibition

The “Productivity Vision of 2019” by Microsoft (2009) showcases some telecom technologies as well, 49 years after the vision of At&T.  The format of the video is less patronising; the voice over was omitted and the characters are more subtle. But, has the message really changed? The video doesn’t pretend to be a vision for everyone. It focuses instead on the lives of wealthy upper class people. The productivity of low income workers in 2019 is never addressed. The video  doesn’t try to build new ideals; the 2019 world depicted by Microsoft is grey, globalized and driven by international corporations. My point is that a less directive vision of the future bears both pros and cons. Unlike its predecessors, this video does not attempt to impose ideals; but by not addressing wider issues, they become all the more prominent. The last scene of the video is on the top of a building filled with a garden. The woman is happy enjoying the simple pleasures of nature. But, not everyone can have a garden on the roof of a building in a highly populated city centre. No answer is given as a solution to the problem. Even more worrying, the managers showed on the video don’t seem to enjoy themselves that much. The woman looks at the life of her daughter with nostalgia. Her life seems to be very challenging and submerged by information. However, the Microsoft video encapsulate many contemporary ideals: the world seems to be in peace, as a consequence of economical globalisation probably; it is liberal, cosmopolitan, green and based on information.

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• Back to the video
• Curation of the exhibition

Discovery of Magnetic North by Richard Jerousek and Brian Phillips [2007] raises many questions. People and situations filmed are distant from the viewer; they fade away by the television effects, the music and the distant time from when they were shot. Characters have their own stories and emotions, but futuristic buildings and medical imaging are interfering. I have the feeling looking at the video that individuality is dissolved in technology and media. Or maybe is it the time passing by that dissolves the scenes from the 70s; and our attempt to remember them is altered  by the media and dreams of technology from back then. In both cases, the video plays with individuality, memory and technology.

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• Back to the video
• Curation of the exhibition

Mardi Gras by Keith Loutit [2009] is part of a series of videos that the artist made using a specific photographic technique. Everything seems small, like in a model city. People are merely figurines. However, Keith Loutit chose light hearted and positive scenes and soundtracks. Mardi Gras in Sydney can only inspire happiness, freedom and liveliness. But seeing it as if it was a model city shows that the event is actually fairly predictable. The public participated by their own choice and they probably enjoyed themselves. It does not make the event appear to be less orchestrated, as though it was part of a big figurine play. Is this an ideal, a planned, conditioned happiness? How much is happiness a sufficient condition for an utopist society? Brave New World* by Aldous Huxley surely proved it isn’t sufficient.

McCOOL!!! By Julian Roberts and Namalee Bolle [2007] is an episode of the series “Relentless optimism”. It is about McDonalds but is much more ambiguous than other videos, which usually present a negative picture of the fast food chain. In this video, the main character genuinely enjoys eating her Big Mac. This event is the story. She seems to have some ideals though; love is written on her hands. The world looks stressful and dark outside of the McDonalds. Inside, the music is light hearted and nobody disturbs the main character from enjoying  her meal. Only the viewer can decide if her pleasure should be embraced or discouraged; whether or not McDonalds restaurants are little places of heaven or symbols of dystopia. Consumerism is frequently attacked but still totally underpins how our society works. No other ideology has achieved the same level of dominance as consumerism.

Tokyo.Future by Ian Lynam [2007] proposes a scenario where the city becomes organic, a living being, after surviving another ice age, thousands of years of civilization and intergalactic exodus. Signs of human activity are visible at the beginning of the journey, but the city soon imposes itself as the main character. The viewer can then wonder if people are still living their own lives, or if they merely became the cells of a conscientious supra entity.  At the end of the movie, the city reaches its final destination on a green virgin planet next to a mountain, which is the same size of the planet. The city seems to recognize itself in nature and stops travelling. She takes her final rest.  Like previous videos in the exhibition, I have interpreted them as I see fit. All interpretations are open to debate. But what is sure is that the videos within the exhibition open the imagination. Tokyo.future goes beyond the few next decades and imagines what the ultimate destination of humanity will be.

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• Back to the videos
• Curation of the exhibition

This paper introduces some of the aspects and philosophical questions related to the concepts of Progress and Utopia. It has been written as part of the Dreams of Progress video art exhibition and philosophical debate, serving as a framework for the selection of the artwork but also as an analysis of the resulting tensions.

Utopia

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Utopia is “an ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions”. It is taken from the title of a book written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, a pagan and communist city-state in which the institutions and policies were entirely governed by reason.

The ambiguity of the word resides in its etymology, the word comes from Greek: οὐ, “not”, and τόπος, “place”, thus meaning a place that is nowhere, impossible to find in reality. Its homophone Eutopia, derived from the Greek εὖ, “good” or “well”, and τόπος, “place”, is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as region of ideal happiness or good order. Thomas More could not have used the word Utopia without knowing it could be interpreted in two different ways. An Utopia can be perfect or fictional or both.

To help clarify the dissertation, I will be using the following terminology:

• Eu-topia, as explained above, derived from the Greek εὖ, “good” or “well”, and τόπος, “place”, is defined as region of ideal happiness or good order.
• Ou-topia derived from the Greek ‘ou’ for “no” and ‘-topos’ for “place,” is a fictional, unrealistic place.
• Dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος) is an imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible [Oxford English Dictionary]

These definitions can be represented on a graph with two axes. [Between Dystopia and Utopia* by Constantinos A. Doxiadis*, 1966]

The first axe defines how realistic an utopia is, from ‘topos’ (meaning that the utopia is reality), to ‘ou-topia’ (meaning that the utopia cannot be real). The definition of ou-topia is unclear on the time scale used to judge whether an utopia is realistic or not. This proves to be especially problematic if technology moves at a fast pace, shifting quickly the perception of an utopia from ou-topia to topos. It remains that some imaginary societies are truly impossible whatever the state of science, because they rely on contradictions or false postulates.

The second axe is between nightmares (dystopia) and dreams (eu-topia). However, the classification cannot be objective because it must be based on a system of values. A perfect social order, for some, can be perceived as a state of perfection but, for others, it could be a type of oppression.

Graph of Utopia

I did not represent on the graph the notion of Heterotopia that Michel Foucault introduced in 1967. The concept goes way beyond the scope of this paper even though it is closely related to Utopia. I’m only going to quote the following text from Michel Foucault:

“First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.

There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places – places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society – which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.”

The graph cannot be objective simply because our idea of Utopia depends heavily on one’s values and on how much the vision is seen as realistic or not. Would a ‘good’ society prioritise the well-being of people or would it refer to the macro-level of the society? Is CCTV and ‘Big Brother’ the achievement of safety or is it the end of personal space and privacy? Debates concerning utopias often end in confrontation of values and levels of optimism.

A final aspect to consider while analyzing utopias is their purposes. They can be multiple:

• An utopia can serve as an ideal that guides the effort of a society.  It can guide for example efforts in technology.  As Constantinos A. Doxiadis describes in his book Between Dystopia and Utopia (1966),  “Technological progress cannot start without any conception of the dreamland that we want and can create. Dreams are necessary and they must precede the technological achievements” . Technology might be motivated by the ideal of knowledge, with the assumption that knowledge brings happiness. It could also be motivated by the ideal of immortality, where medicine attempts to erase what is presented as the ultimate cause of sadness. Total knowledge and immortality are two utopias driving our efforts even though they will probably never be reached.
• An utopia can also be a means to criticise a society, by considering how it can be different. The goal then is not to necessary build a realistic vision, but to bring attention to the existing social norms. The use of Utopia is particularly relevant in a oppressive context where political projects cannot be debated openly. It is also adequate when social rules are so established that the possibility of change is not even thinkable. A science-fictional vision can help by relaxing conditioned judgements and by making the assertion look less confrontational. The Garden of Eden is another example, the purpose of the biblical story was not to be realistic, but to explain what the relation between man, god and nature ought to be.
• Many utopias emerge paradoxically in times of crisis, when they are the less likely to become real. This demonstrates an important capacity of human nature, the ability to reinvent the world when no hope remains, to see beyond its immediate future and draw the lines of a seemingly unlikely destiny.

Understanding the inherent contradictions of an utopia, the aims of its author(s), its historical and social context, how it was perceived by its contemporaries, is a precious insight into a society and its values.

Progress

Progress can be about anything: science, health, happiness, wealth, effectiveness just to give few examples. This paper focuses on social progress, which is loosely defined by Wikipedia as the “changing of society toward the ideal”. The difficult part is naturally to define what is the ideal.

As an example, here is a definition of Progress derived from a specific ideal: progress is a “developmental activity in science, technology, etc., esp. with reference to the commercial opportunities created thereby or to the promotion of the material well-being of the public through the goods, techniques, or facilities created” [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/progress]. The definition is clearly based on consumerist and scientific values. One should recognize this is not the only viewpoint on what Progress should be.

Another tension exists within the notion of Progress: does it exist and in which form? The typical Western view is that Progress exists and is linear, constantly improving lives of people. A more nuanced view is that Progress happens in the long run but is made of ups, downs and diversions. The Buddhist view is that there is no progress at all, but only an eternal cycle of repetitions.

Furthermore, what happens when societies and their ideals change? Is there a ‘macro progress’ clearly building up through a succession of visions of Progress, so that society is learning from its past mistakes and defines each time a better vision, from monarchical ideals to democratic ones for example? Or is it a cycle, with notions of Progress all being equivalent, all of them predestined to collapse so that the next one can emerge?

The nature of an ideal and the possibility of Progress are both central questions to the way a society works. Throughout history, societies changed the way they operate to maximize the chance to reach their ideals: monasteries are structures invented to reach religious goals, factories are made in the perspective of achieving economical ideals, Internet is made with the hope to create a world of universal knowledge. I believe that one of the biggest threat for a society is to not elicit its position on Progress, making it impossible to organise itself convincingly, to address the challenges of its time consistently and to inspire fellowship from its members.

References

http://curatedmatter.org/2009/06/18/book-references-for-the-dreams-of-progress-philosophical-debate/