INDEX
GLOBAL SCREEN WHEN THE SCREEN BECOMES A WORLD / WHEN THE WORLD BECOMES A SCREEN
EXHIBITION CONCEPT EXHIBITION STRUCTURE: A SCREEN SKIN
EXHIBITION SEQUENCE
SPACE A.
FACADE SCREEN
SPACE B.
SISTINE SCREEN
SCREEN STRIP 1/ 2/ 3/ 4/ 5/ 6/ 7/ 8/
HISTORY SCREEN POLITICAL SCREEN SPORTS SCREEN ADVERTISING SCREEN EXCESS SCREEN SURVEILLANCE SCREEN PLAY SCREEN SOCIAL SCREEN: COUNTER-POINT
The aim of the exhibition is to show the power of the screen (seduction, shock, information, archetype, surveillance, immediacy, interactivity...), a power which, during the course of technological breakthroughs, has grown, been renewed and diffracted, from the power of the initial format – film – which has since encroached on all the spaces of everyday life in the city: the proliferation of screens, screens everywhere you go, screens which show you everything and which allow you to do everything, the TV screen, the video screen, miniature screens, touch screens, recreational screens, information screens… The screen has become a constituent element of hypermodern societies. The exhibition sets out to show the power that has been transferred from the big cinema screen to all types of digital screen.
articulate and transmit. And the phenomenon is even stronger because it has become globalised and is instantaneous: the screen doesn’t only create another illusory, specular world, it is the screen which opens the door to the world.
The 20th century was the century of the screen, from its original form – film – to all the other screens that emerged in its wake (television, computer, video console, mobile phone, ultrasound, GPS, internet, etc.). This proliferation of screens has gone hand in hand with an unprecedented power which has affected all aspects of life: cultural production, information, relationships with others, politics, art, day-to-day existence. Two major functions of the screen continuously restructure contemporary life: firstly, entertainment, the screen as spectacle, to which we must add the dimension of information and communication. The first model – FILM – was characterised by its considerable power over the masses. From the very outset, it developed a power of seduction which fascinated thousands of spectators, thus creating a culture of the masses, wielding an economic power and structuring an imaginary: a dream factory. This model is no longer exactly the one we have today; the proliferation of screens has opened up a new era, and other powers have been added to this power to entertain, exporting the figures from the early years of the cinema to other screens, bringing them to life, feeding them, shaping them. All the other screens (TV, advertising, videogames, video clips, Second Life...) bear the imprint of this cinevision. Beyond this cinematic usage, the SCREEN today has become the gateway to the world: relationships no longer exist without the screen in the world today. Not only are all aspects of everyday life shown on a screen, but relationships with the city, culture, knowledge and social relationships depend on what screens
The proposed structure for the exhibition (based on a single screen) will provide a different experience to the usual array of screens with their separate audiovisuals which are inevitably set out in the manner of a retrospective. The basic – and radical – idea consists of creating a single screen which will act as a canvas for the exhibition: an audiovisual strip stretching round all the galleries from start to finish. This format will enable us to create an audiovisual lexicon which eschews the sequence of isolated screens and avoids the inevitable series of monitors, plasma screens and others without
this affecting the logical thematic or conceptual division which forms the thread of the exhibition outline. This screen will also provide an appropriate medium to contain all the other screens to be included, which can be shown in their respective aspect ratios or typical caches (the rounded frame of early television sets, for instance), and they may, at times, extend beyond its edges (if Cinerama or Imax are to be included). However, above all, this infinite strip will allow us to play with the constant reconfigurations of the projection surface. Whenever possible, this format should make it easier to view the greatest number of media possible in each thematic area, from cinema to TV, from the internet to other channels and potential screens, be they public or for individual use.
This is the first screen the visitor encounters. It consists of projections on the exterior facade of the CCCB, a wall trailer in split screen. The aim is to grab the attention of the visitor and to cause confusion – prior to entering the exhibition itinerary per se – between real space and screen.
This area links us to two pre-cinematic screens (the Sistine Chapel and similar wall narratives, and the planetarium), evoking the starry skies producers have imitated with their film stars. This SISTINE SCREEN derives from the faces of film stars and, taking in TV stars, leads us towards the ego stars of YouTube and the new digital media.
Our era is inseparable from a certain number of major historic events, or rather, and this for the first time in the history of humanity, of images of these events, which have turned into archetypes of the modern world. The aim of this section is to understand how our imaginary is structured, remodeled, by the images of these events, and how film, television and internet images have had repercussions on those events and on our vision of history. The modern era has not only created grand narratives (progress, revolution, democracy), but also archetypes, constructed and spread via different screens.
The cinema screen was quick to place itself at the service of political discourse, first with the aim of ideological propaganda, particularly in totalitarian regimes: the screen hammers home the values of the regime on society in the same authoritarian style as the regime itself. With television, things change and another model is disseminated, that of political communication, which borrows the techniques of advertising. Political marketing does not attempt to impose an ideological dogma so much as to sell a product, in the best possible packaging: seduction is the tone, here. This, without forgetting, either, all the possibilities the screen offers to those who are not in power: militant cinema, antisystemic videos or messages from Al-Qaeda.
HISTORY SCREEN
POLITICAL SCREEN
Sport has been another of the major components of a contemporary collective imaginary that has been formatted by different screens. Sport has moved from broadcasting pure and simple, with commentaries that were epic and lyrical in style, to a purely cinematic mise en scène that has led it to become a worldwide spectacle. At the same time, sport has turned into a metaphor for social life, providing a model of vision that different screens offer to the world.
SPORTS SCREEN
The century of screens has not only transmitted major historical events, but has been at the service of the economy, of big companies, of the market, creating new archetypes in these areas, too, spreading an ideal of the good life, accompanying and contributing to the formation of a civilization of consumption. In this, advertising has been the privileged expression of a century of mass production and consumption, and this section will help us to understand its internal grammar and its influence on other screens.
ADVERTISING SCREEN
In the era of hypermodernity the screen does not escape the regime of escalation, excess and hype. The screen goes much further today, in a race to transcend limits, in an exponential proliferation that takes us in the direction of the never-sufficient, the never-enough. The image has turned into an ever-stronger image of excess that leads us towards the unsustainable, thematically (sex, violence, speed, extremes) as well as formally (the multiplication of ever briefer shots, the pace of editing, the saturation of the soundtrack).
One of the most spectacular phenomena to do with the new screens is also one that creates more radical problems: the increase in video surveillance systems, spy planes, real-time locating systems, GPSes, Google Maps and body scanners that threaten our civil liberties, both public and private. Today, human beings are constantly photographed, filmed, watched, and not only for security or political ends, but for commercial ones, too. Ought we to fear the irruption of an Orwellian world?
These concepts will be represented by three works by the Belgian video artist NICOLAS PROVOST, who has taken the theme of the limits of representation to an absolutely radical and surprising conclusion.
EXCESS SCREEN
Nicolas Provost Film still of Abstract Action, 2010 / Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp
SURVEILLANCE SCREEN
This type of screen suggests a new perspective: that of recreation, of game-playing, of spectacle, creating alongside the real world another world whose predominant feature is pleasure. This immersion in a fictitious world which appears to be real conveys the player towards a psychological splitting by offering the possibility of living another life parallel to their real one. From the consoles of video games to online games, interactivity is expressed in all its plenitude, giving to each person the sensation of living in a created world in which you can choose between infinite possibilities, and in which one encounters, within this ludic virtual universe, a form of revenge on boring, banal reality. The exhibition will end with this play space where visitors can experience for themselves the interaction and confusion, even, between physical reality and the new virtual reality stemming from the screens of video games via an augmented reality facility.
PLAY SCREEN
Nowadays, the interactivity of different screens is not a peripheral phenomenon or a field limited to video games. It is at the very centre of the emergence of screens in the contemporary world. In the context of the global screen, the roles of transmitter/receiver have completely changed. In light of this, the Global Screen project has developed a participatory device involving an open screen, a social screen, that we have called COUNTER-POINT, and which will extend throughout the exhibition, providing space for the visual contributions of any person interested in collaborating in this process of joint reflection on the role of screens in the contemporary world. Like the reverse angle in cinema, it provides an open and unpredictable counterpoint to the discourse created by the exhibition curators. These small audiovisual pieces will be processed via the project website-starting in September 2011-before finally being incorporated in the exhibition following its opening in January 2012.
SOCIAL SCREEN
An agreement between the CCCB and the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) will lead to an exhibition taking place in the latter on the work of an essential creator that attests to the importance of the screen in contemporary art: ALEXANDER SOKUROV. The work of Alexander Sokurov (Podorvikha, Russia, 1950) might be defined as existing at the crossroads of two filmic traditions: documentary and fiction, the latter being understood as the artistic transformation of reality. His is a form of production characterized by a new approach to filmic “traditionalism,” in which personal experience combines with tradition. The proposed tour through the works of this artist, present in the MACBA Collection, will in fact form the starting point of the exhibition.
Alexander Sokurov Film still of Confession. Series "The Military", 1998 MACBA Collection. Fundació Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Donation Dinath de Grandi de Grijalbo / Courtesy of Idéale Audience Internatinal, Pierre-Olivier Bardet