Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The city is no longer the politico-industrial zone of production. Rather, the post-industrial city is principally, a crucial locus of late capitalist spectacle. It is a spatial extension of the spectacular “image-commodity” – a veritable “empire of signs” (Baudrillard, 1976). In the late capitalist city, corporate imagery and its compelling “sign-values” proliferate every available space and mediate social relations. In the context of this shift in the city model, this paper examines instances of contemporary art, which operate within the city’s ubiquitous visual realm, counteracting its “economy of appearances” (Debord, 1967). This paper’s overarching aim is to demonstrate how Situationist concepts of “spectacle” and “détournement” may be repurposed to critically analyse visual contemporary art whose production has been shaped by the conditions of the “urban spectacle” (the spatial manifestation of a capitalist economy in which social relations are no longer primarily mediated by commodities, but by images). This study demonstrates how the image is a contested site within the West’s capitalist-urbanism nexus. The image acquires a dialectical status – it is a locus of capitalist spectacle, but also a conduit for contemporary art’s urban post-Marxist critiques. This paper’s objective is to challenge contemporary art’s presumption that visuality must be rejected in favour of an “aesthetics of action” in order to prevent reiterating capitalism’s “economy of appearances.” The research presented argues that, in the Western capitalist city, visual contemporary art does not have to reinstate the spectacle, but can arguably function as an effective method to counteract it.