Christian Ruby
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Cf. www.editionsnessy.fr
Is being part of an audience an
achievement? Nobody ever wonders about it anymore. Are exercises necessary to
its accomplishment? Even less. One does immediately feel part of it.
Nevertheless,
we may ask: where does this certainty come from? Is there any “nature of the
spectator”?
There
is none. At the very most must we understand that some of our historical habits
have turned into a “natural”, of which we cannot be conscious unless the member
of the audience we have become, devoted to contemplation, is put to the test by
the world's, on the one hand, as by contemporary arts', on the other hand,
realities.
Therefore,
we are not born members of an audience; we become thus. Such an achievement
comes as a result of an education based as on examinations, auditions, lectures
and forms of judgment towards the work of art itself, as through confrontation
with others.
In
order to understand this achievement, it has been necessary to elaborate an
approach.
It
has first consisted in the study of exercises which have allowed the birth of
the classical spectator. As such a work can only concern a limited number of
individuals – writers, diarists, reporters or philosophers who have recorded
their paths - we have chosen to focus on
the 18th century philosophers, which is the moment, with the birth
of aesthetic, when the function of the spectator has been invented and
codified. Therefore, we must focus, through their works, on its elaboration.
The invention and legitimation of the transition from the state of philosopher
to the state of spectator – confronted to a work of art, the world, nature, or
history- belongs to a polemical context which is particular to the
Enlightenment philosophy.
That
being said, if the historical retrospection which has been ours, on the
elaboration of this concept by the 18th century philosophers, has
shown how it historically happened, it was above all adequate concerning the
situation at the time,which is to say a situation where anyone could see the “end”
of a classical figure, and the birth of a new audience type.
Henceforth,
this retrospection was a way to readjust , amongst certain individuals, to its
own worth the weight of any “spectator” ideal which would be a replica of the
classical model, and to show resolutely optimistic perspectives concerning the
contemporary publics' behavior.
Besides,
as soon as its lineaments had been settled by classical age, criticism spread
towards the spectator's founding activity, as arts attempted to shift its
exercises, and as it was attributed“a sense of common”which was submitted to
various deviations, more and more numerous. Modern art, followed by
contemporary art, have invented the “watcher” as well as the “spectactor” - not
only the spectator. Yet, during the 20th century, by multiplying
aesthetizations of society, States and medias have also invented new types of
audiences: for example, the medias', contrasting with spectators in a stadium.
Besides, the conflict between the latter and intellectuals, who despise them,
is worsening.
From
these conflicts, we may be taught an essential lesson. No doubt, if it has ever
existed, the spectator does not exist under its unifying classical form
anymore. It is consequently adequate to consider seriously various spectators'
paths, as heterogeneous than numerous. Within the arts, to talk only about
them, the spectator, the watcher, and the spectactor do not accomplish the same
exercises. Anyone can, within our various activities or visits, represent each
of these paths simultaneously.
Moreover,
such dynamics and paths of the audiences can lead to the composition of
archipelagos. The archipelago figure not only means that we must consider
seriously the idea of a spectator which is changing, numerous, polemical, in
short a spectator confronted with a perpetual “unholding” of oneself, but it
also means that we must rethink the “common” which would link the members of an
audience. It is only given into habits which are to get rid of. It is by
isolating himself that the spectator becomes one, which permits the becoming of
a new “common”. By composing their deviations, spectators might reconsider
their actions inside of the city, without bending to assignations to which they
are expected to be limited.
Being
aware of what has been said earlier, the reader can choose two different
approaches for this work. Choosing either a linear reading, which shows him the
weaving of the conflicts in question; or choosing to begin with the second part
of the book, and going back afterward to the first one, in a way to fully
understand the signification and vanity of the most frequent nostalgia.
Thus,
while becoming a spectator, we all follow a path which permits us to
perpetually wonder about our tastes, and gives us a possibility to discuss them
with others.
We
could resume the book's approach thus: contrarily to what a lot of commentators
state, there is no norm of a “good” spectator in itself. In order to fully
understand the intrusion of a norm in the ways a spectator looks at a work of
art, we must confront our time with the history of the figures of the
spectator.
We
are then confronted to another question: How could the 18th century
philosophers build the classical activity of a spectator, as how could they educate
themselves in the exercises which fulfilled it? This is what we are going to
talk about in the first place.
Yet,
we must ask ourselves why this configuration has been translated as a model
which serves, nowadays, to evaluate the audiences of medias, the spectators in
stadium, and of society. Some intellectuals despise them, and accuse them of
degrading without remission the classical ideal. Nevertheless, new spectators
are neither passive, or ignorant, nor incapable of emancipating themselves from
the norm of spectacle itself.
The time has come to redraw an art of
the spectator fitting our time. Contemporary art helps us in this matter, as it
offers a new place for the spectator in the public sphere.
Has
the spectator's place become vague and precarious because of the implications
of contemporary art and the omnipresence of industry as of cultural
consummation? Is there only one model of the spectator, henceforth lost, only
maintained amongst those who are nostalgic for it?
To answer such questions may only be
possible after a clarification about their origins, and about what exactly are
those models of spectator, dominants for a long time, according to which we
judge the present time. A reflexion
about the role of contemporary art, and in which measure it forces those models
to modify themselves, is also essential.
(Translation :
Eleonore Herscovici)